Timeline Great Britain 1911-1941
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1911 Jan 17,
Francis Galton (b.1822), English scientist, died. He was one of the
first moderns to present a carefully considered eugenics program. His
work included the invention of weather maps and the description of
fingerprints. He also developed a system for classifying human profiles
using geometric diagrams. He was a cousin of Charles Darwin and the
founder of the science of statistics. The idea of sterilizing human
beings considered as physical or mental undesirables stemmed from
Galton’s ideas.
(NH, 6/97, p.18)(SFC, 8/28/97,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton)
1911 Apr 12, Pierre Prier
completed the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56
minutes.
(HN, 4/12/99)
1911 May 8, England signed a
treaty with China making opium the main trading commodity with the
Chinese.
(SMTS, 10/1/86, p.4)
1911 Mar 9, The funding for five
new battleships was added to the British military defense budget.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1911 May 16, Remains of a
Neanderthal man were found in Jersey, UK.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1911 May 29, William Schwenck
Gilbert (74), writer (Gilbert & Sullivan), died.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1911 Jun 22, King George V of
England crowned at Westminster Abbey.
(SFEM, 1/26/97, p.40)(HN, 6/22/98)
1911 Jul 14, Terry Thomas, actor
(It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World), was born in England.
(MC, 7/14/02)
1911 Jul 20, Generals Henry Wilson
and Auguste Dubail signed a plan for British Expeditionary army in case
of war with Germany.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1911 Aug 10, The House of Lords in
Great Britain gave up its veto power, making the House of Commons the
more powerful House.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1911 Sep 9, An airmail route
opened between London and Windsor.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1911 Oct 4, The 1st public
elevator began service at London's Earl's Court Metro Station.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1911 Nov 21, Suffragettes stormed
Parliament in London. All were arrested and all chose prison terms.
(HN, 11/21/98)
1911 Dec 10, Joseph Dalton Hooker
(b.1817), British botonist and explorer, died.
(WSJ, 5/10/08,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Dalton_Hooker)
1911 King George V of Britain
visited India. He went hunting in Nepal and from the back of an
elephant bagged 21 tigers, 8 rhinos, and a bear.
(NG, 12/97, p.138)
1912 Jan 1, Kim Philby was born.
He became a ringleader of a group of upper crust Englishmen who entered
public service or, in many cases, the British Secret Service, then
spied for the Soviets. Philby got away and spent his last years in
Moscow.
(MC, 1/1/02)
1912 Jan 16, British explorer
Robert Falcon Scott wrote in his diary after reaching the South Pole on
January 16, 1912, "Great God this is an awful place and terrible enough
for us to have labored to it without the reward of priority." Robert
Scott, attempting to lead the first exploration party to the South
Pole, wrote the passage after finding the black flag of Norwegian
explorer Roald Amundsen. Thoroughly demoralized, the five members of
the Scott party died during their 800-mile trek back to their base
camp. [see Jan 18]
(HNQ, 7/22/98)
1912 Jan 18, The expedition of
British Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott intended to be the first
to reach the South Pole, but when they arrived they found a letter from
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had been there over a month
earlier. Scott and his group had set out from a camp in Antarctica 81
days earlier, and on their way back, their supplies ran out. Scott
wrote in a diary during the trek, which a search party discovered with
the team's frozen bodies in November. Part of Scott's March 29 entry
reads, "We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of
course, and the end cannot be far." The team had made it to within 11
miles of the camp. Scott's diary ended with, "Last Entry: For God's
sake look after our people." [see Jan 16]
(AP, 1/18/98)(HNPD, 1/18/99)
1912 Jan 30, The British House of
Lords opposed the House of Commons by rejecting home rule for Ireland.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1912 Feb 26, Coal miners struck in
England. They settled on 03/01.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1912 Mar 27, James Callaghan
(d.2005), British prime minister (1976-1979), was born in Portsmouth,
England.
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.A21)
1912 Mar 29, Capt. Robert F.
Scott, British pole explorer, storm-bound in a tent near South Pole,
made a last entry in his diary: "the end cannot be far."
(MC, 3/29/02)
1912 Apr 2, Titanic underwent sea
trials under its own power.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1912 Apr 10, The 66,000 ton RMS
Titanic left port from Southampton, England, on its ill-fated maiden
voyage with 2,223 people.
(SFC, 7/5/96, PM, p.16)(SFEC, 12/8/96, BR p.6)(AP,
4/10/97)
1912 Apr 13, Royal Flying Corps
formed (later RAF).
(MC, 4/13/02)
1912 Apr 15, At 2:20 a.m., two
hours and 40 minutes after impact, the luxury liner RMS Titanic sank in
the North Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland with the loss of about 1,522
lives. About 1,500 [1517] people died. Because there were lifeboats for
only half those on board, only 705 passengers and crew survived the
disaster. Among the survivors was J. Bruce Ismay, president of the
White Star Line, who telegraphed his New York office, "Deeply regret
advise you Titanic sank this morning after collision with iceberg,
resulting in serious loss of life. Full particulars later." Nearly a
third of the passengers died. The ship’s band played the waltz “Songe
d’Automne” as it sank. The accident killed 1,523 [1503] people and 705
survived. By 1996 only 8 were still alive. Nearly 60% of the
first-class passengers survived. There were 214 staff members of the
685 survivors. It was later discovered that Harland & Wolff, the
ship’s builder, had used a lower quality rivet on the ship that likely
contributed to the rapid sinking. The last night on the ship was
described by Rick Archbold and Dana McCauley in their book: “Last
Dinner on the Titanic.” The steamer Carpathia rescued 705 of the 2,358
people onboard. Prof. Steven Biel of Brandeis Univ. wrote “A Cultural
History of the Titanic” in 1997.
(AP, 4/15/97)(SFC, 7/5/96, PM, p.16)(SFC, 9/22/96,
Par p.25)(WSJ, 4/9/97, p.A1)(SFC, 4/14/97, p.E8)(SFC, 4/19/97,
p.A3)(SFEC,12/797, DB p.37)(SFC, 4/15/08, p.A6)
1912 Apr 28, Odette Hallowes,
British secret agent in France, was born. She was later captured and
tortured by the Gestapo.
(HN, 4/28/99)
1912 May 13, The Royal
Flying Corps was established in England. It was the predecessor of the
Royal Air Force.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(HN, 5/13/99)
1912 Jun 23, Alan M. Turing
(d.1954), English mathematician and pioneer of computer theory, was
born. He cracked the Enigma code in World War II that was used by the
Germans to communicate with their submarines. A play by Hugh Whitemore
titled "Breaking the Code," tells his story. It was shown as a TV film
on Masterpiece Theater in 1997.
(V.D.-H.K.p.349)(SFC, 1/31/97, p.D3)(HN, 6/23/01)
1912 Jul 15, British National
Health Insurance Act went into effect.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1912 Aug 10, Leonard Woolf
(1880-1969), English man of letters, married writer Virginia Duckworth
(b.1882). Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941.
(WSJ, 12/17/05,
p.P13)(www.online-literature.com/virginia_woolf/)
1912 Aug 20, William Booth,
English minister, founder (Salvation Army), died.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1912 Sep 1, Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor (b.1875), Afro-British composer, died.
(http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/Song.html#16)
1912 Sep 3, World's 1st cannery
opened in England to supply food to the navy.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1912 Dec 18, In the famous
Piltdown Man Forgery amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson announced the
discovery of two skulls from the Piltdown Quarry in Sussex, England.
They appeared to belong to a primitive hominid and ancestor of man.
Also found was a canine tooth, a tool carved from an elephant's tusk,
and fossil teeth from a number of prehistoric animals. Dawson enlisted
the help of vertebrate paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward. They
christened it Eoanthropus dawsoni and on this day they announced their
find to the Geological Society of London. A 1996 book "Unraveling
Piltdown" by John Evangelist Walsh labeled Dawson as the perpetrator of
the hoax. The missing link was later determined to be only 600 years
old. The fossils had been doctored to look and test to be older. [see
1908, 1913, 1953, 1955 & 1983]
(PacDisc, Spring ‘96, p.15)(SFEC, 9/22/96, BR
p.9)(MC, 12/18/01)
1912 The British Royal Navy
E-class submarine entered service.
(SSFC, 1/2/05, p.E3)
1913 Jan 31, The British House of
Lords rejected a bill tabled by the Liberal government and passed by
the House of Commons on January 16 proposing home rule for Ireland. One
peer said that home rule would make the Irish "a menace in war and a
disturbing influence in peace."
(HC, 2003, p.64)
1913 Apr 3, British suffragette
Emily Pankhurst was sentenced to 3 years in jail.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1913 May 6, Stewart Granger,
[James Stewart], actor (Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche), was born in
London.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1913 May 7, British House of
Commons rejected women's right to vote.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1913 Jun 2, Barbara Pym (Mary
Crampton), English novelist (Less Than Angels, Quartet in Autumn), was
born.
(HN, 6/2/01)
1913 Jul 7, British House of
Commons accepted Home-Rule Law.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1913 Jul 15, Hammond Innes,
English novelist, was born.
(HN, 7/15/01)
1913 Sep 1, George Bernard Shaw’s
"Androcles and the Lion," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1913 Oct 14, An explosion in a
coal mine in Cardiff, Wales, killed 439.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1913 Oct 17, Zeppelin LII exploded
over London, killing 28.
(HN, 10/17/98)
1913 Nov 22, Benjamin Britten
(d.1976), English composer, pianist and conductor, was born.
(WSJ, 7/26/99, p.A21)(HN, 11//00)
1913 Arthur Bernstein, later named
Sir Arthur Gilbert, was born in Golders Green, North London. His
Gilbert Collection was donated to the Queen Mother in 2000 and
installed at Somerset House.
(WSJ, 6/15/00, p.A24)
1913 London stopped published
archives of the Old Bailey as newspapers began publishing details of
court cases. By 2008 the archives, going back to 1694, were digitized
and made available on line.
(Econ, 5/3/08, p.65)
1914 Feb 25, John Tenniel
(b.1820), English illustrator, died. He is best remembered for his
illustrations in Lewis Carroll's “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” and
“Through the Looking-Glass.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tenniel)
1914 Mar 1, H. Colijn, Dutch
Minister of war, was named director of British Petroleum.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1914 Mar 10, Suffragettes in
London damaged painter Rokeby's Venus of Velasquez.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1914 Apr 7, British House of
Commons passed the Irish Home Rule Bill.
(HN, 4/7/97)
1914 Apr 9, The 1st full color
film: "World, Flesh & Devil" was shown in London.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1914 May 6, British House of Lords
rejected women suffrage.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1914 May 25, British House of
Commons passed Irish Home Rule.
(HN, 5/25/98)
1914 Jul 20, Armed resistance
against British rule began in Ulster.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1914 Jul 27, British troops
invaded the streets of Dublin, Ireland, and began to disarm Irish
rebels.
(HN, 7/27/98)
1914 Aug 2, Great Britain
mobilized.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1914 Aug 4, Britain and Belgium
declared war after German troops entered Belgium. The United States
proclaimed its neutrality.
(HNQ, 7/24/98)(AP, 8/4/97)
1914 Aug 5, The British
Expeditionary Force mobilized for World War I.
(HN, 8/5/98)
1914 Aug 13, The British purchased
3 fast cross-channel packets: Empress, Riviera and Engadine. The ships
were converted into seaplane tenders for reconnaissance.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Aug 12, Great Britain
declared war on Austria-Hungary.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1914 Aug 19, The British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) landed in France.
(HN, 8/19/98)
1914 Aug 28, Three German cruisers
were sunk by ships of the Royal Navy in the Battle of Heligoland Bight,
the first major naval battle of World War I. The Germans lost four
ships and 1,000 sailors; British casualties were 33 killed.
(HN, 8/28/98)(RTH, 8/28/99)
1914 Aug, The British Flying Corps
(RFC) was sent to France to support the British Expeditionary Corps.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Aug, Sir Ernest Shackleton
(40) left England on a voyage to Antarctica with a 27 man crew on the
HMS Endurance. He planned to lead the "Imperial Trans-Continental
Expedition," a dog-sled party across the continent.
(WSJ, 4/2/98, p.B15)(ON, 5/00, p.9)
1914 Sep 3, The air defense of
Great Britain was assigned to Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Winston
Churchill, the new first lord of the Admiralty, and the RNAS were
assigned the task of stopping the Zeppelins.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Sep 8, Pvt. Thomas Highgate
(18) was the first British soldier in the war to be shot for desertion.
He had become separated from his unit, but said he was trying to rejoin
it when he was detained. In 2006 the British government prepared to
pardon 305 men who were hauled before firing squads in World War I for
desertion or cowardice after summary trials.
(AP, 8/16/06)
1914 Sep 18, The Irish Home Rule
Bill became law, but was delayed until after World War I. The
Government of Ireland Act became law. It was an act by the British
government to take effect at the end of World War I.
(WSJ,3/13/95, p.A-15)(HN, 9/18/98)
1914 Sep 20, Kenneth More, English
actor (39 Steps, Doctor in the House), was born.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1914 Sep 22, The RNAS attempted
their first air attack on the Zeppelins at Dusseldorf and Cologne.
There was little damage done.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Sep 22, A German submarine
sank 3 British ironclads, 1,459 died. The Aboukir, the Hogue, and the
Cressy, were all sunk in just over one hour. This loss
alerted the British to the deadly effectiveness of the submarine,
which had been generally unrecognized up to that time.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1914 Oct 4, The first German
Zeppelin raided London.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1914 Oct 8, The RNAS attempted
another air attack on the Zeppelins at Dusseldorf and Cologne. The
dirigible shed at Dusseldorf was destroyed.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Oct 27, Dylan Thomas, British
poet and author whose works included "Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Dog," was born in Swansea, Wales.
(AP, 10/27/97)(HN, 10/27/98)
1914 Oct 27, The British
battleship Audacious was sunk by a mine.
(MC, 10/27/01)
1914 Oct 29, Retired Admiral John
Arbuthnot Fisher (73) accepted re-appointment as First Sea Lord.
(ON, 3/02, p.10)
1914 Oct 31, Great Britain and
France declared war on Turkey. [see Nov 5]
(MC, 10/31/01)
1914 Nov 1, A German squadron
engaged the British fleet under Adm. Craddock near Coronel Bay, Chile.
The ships Good Hope and Monmouth were sunk and 1,600 men were lost
including Adm. Craddock.
(MC, 11/1/01)(ON, 3/02, p.11)
1914 Nov 2, Great Britain annexed
Cyprus.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1914 Nov 5, The French and British
declared war on Turkey. [see Oct 31]
(HN, 11/5/98)
1914 Nov 21, The RNAS attempted an
air attack on the Zeppelins at Friedrichshafen. They succeeded in doing
considerable damage.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Nov 26, Battleship HMS
Bulwark exploded at Sheerness Harbor, England, 788 died.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1914 Dec 8, The German cruisers
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Liepzig were sunk by a British
force under Adm. Sturdee in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. 1,800
German sailors were killed including Adm. Von Spee and his 2 sons. Over
2,500 lives were lost in a single day.
(HN, 12/8/98)(ON, 3/02, p.11)(SSFC, 10/6/02, p.C12)
1914 Dec 25, The British Royal
Navy Air Force attempted to bomb the German Zeppelin shed at Cuxhaven.
Fog obscured the mission and the bombs were dropped on other sites,
i.e. a seaplane base on Langeoog Island, the light cruisers Stralsund
and Graudenz and the city of Wilhemshaven. An audacious British air
attack on a Zeppelin base in northern Germany caught the Germans with
their defenses down.
(AH, 1/97)(HN, 3/22/97)
1914 The British Royal Navy's
Grand Fleet moved to a new base in Scapa Flow, in Scotland’s Orkney
Islands. They needed a safe place to take on a German Fleet based in
the Baltic.
(www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/eastmainland/churchill/)
1914-1918 The German campaign in East Africa was
directed by General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. German looting and
raiding caused at least 300,000 civilian deaths. By attacking Northern
Rhodesia they invaded British territory. Of 1 million porters recruited
by the British, 95,000 died. In 2007 Edward Paice authored “Tip and
Run: The Untold Tragedy of the Great War in Africa. In 2008 Edward
Paice authored “World War I: The African Front.
(Econ, 2/17/07, p.87)(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W8)
1915 Jan 1, German submarine
U-24 sank the British battleship Formidable in the English Channel
whilst on patrol and exercise with the 5th Battle Squadron. She sank
rapidly with the loss of 547 crew. The 5BS had been steaming slowly
(10knots), not zigzagging and were without destroyer escort. Admiral in
charge Lewis Bayly was dismissed from his position over the loss.
(www.worldwar1.co.uk/sunk15.htm)
1915 Jan 19, The first German air
raids on Britain inflicted minor casualties. A Zeppelin attack over
Great Britain killed 4 people.
(HN, 1/19/99)(MC, 1/19/02)
1915 Jan 24, The German cruiser
Blücher was sunk by a British squadron in the Battle of Dogger
Bank.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1915 Jan 31, German U-boats sank
two British steamers in the English Channel.
(HN, 1/31/99)
1915 Feb 4, Germans decreed
British waters part of war zone; all ships were to be sunk without
warning.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1915 Feb 18, Germany began a
blockade of England.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1915 Feb 19, British and French
warships began their attacks on the Turkish forts at the mouth of the
Dardenelles, in an abortive expedition to force the straits of
Gallipoli. Winston Churchill was the architect of the disastrous
campaign.
(HN, 2/19/99)(NW, 12/24/01, p.64)
1915 Feb 28, Peter Medawar,
zoologist, immunologist (Nobel 1953), was born in England.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1915 Mar 2, British Vice Admiral
Carden began bombing of Dardanelles forts.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1915 Mar 13, The Germans repelled
a British Expeditionary Force attack at the battle of Neuve Chapelle in
France.
(HN, 3/13/99)
1915 Mar 14, The British Navy sank
the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.
(HN, 3/14/98)
1915 Mar 16, British battle
cruisers Inflexible and Irresistible hit mines in Dardanelle (Turkey).
(MC, 3/16/02)
1915 Apr 26, Second Lieutenant
Rhodes-Moorhouse became the first airman to win the Victoria Cross
after conducting a successful bombing raid.
(HN, 4/26/99)
1915 May 5, German U-20 sank the
Earl of Lathom.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1915 May 7, In the 2nd year of
WWI, the British Cunard ocean liner Lusitania, on a voyage from New
York to Liverpool, sank off the coast of Ireland in only 18-21 minutes
after being struck by a torpedo fired by the German U-boat U-20. Of
1,959 [1,978] passengers and crew, 1,195 died. Of the fatalities, 123
were Americans. Even though the Germans maintained the liner was
carrying arms purchased in America to Britain, the sinking of a
passenger ship aroused intense anger against the German policy of
unrestricted submarine warfare and hastened America's entrance into the
war. In 2002 Diana Preston authored "Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy" and
David Ramsay authored "Lusitania: Saga and Myth."
(CFA, '96, p.46)(AP, 5/7/97)(HN, 5/7/98)(HNPD,
5/7/99)(HN, 5/7/99)(WSJ, 5/8/02, p.AD9)
1915 May 10, A Zeppelin dropped
hundreds of bombs on Southend-on-Sea.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1915 May 31, A German LZ-38
Zeppelin made an air raid on London. [see Jun 1]
(HN, 5/31/98)
1915 May, Adm. John Fisher
(d.1920) resigned his position as First Sea Lord.
(ON, 3/02, p.11)
1915 Jun 1, Germany conducted the
first zeppelin air raid over England. [see May 10, 31]
(DTnet, 6/1/97)(HN, 6/1/98)
1915 Jun 11, British troops took
Cameroon in Africa.
(HN, 6/11/98)
1915 Jul 26, James Murray, lead
compiler of the Oxford English Dictionary, died. The final entry to the
dictionary was completed in 1928. In 2003 Simon Winchester authored
“The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary.”
(ON, 11/05, p.7)
1915 Aug 14, British transport
Royal Edward was sunk a by German U boat and some 1000 people were
killed.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1915 Aug 19, The British ocean
liner Arabic was sunk by Germany. After the sinking Germany promised
that no more merchant ships would be torpedoed without warning. Two
Americans were aboard and Germany feared U.S. entry into World War I.
Earlier, in May 1915, a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania,
killing 60 percent of those on board-some 1,198-of whom 128 were
Americans. The threat of American intervention receded until the
beleaguered Germans believed it was necessary to resume unrestricted
submarine warfare to break the British blockade. On January 31, 1917,
Berlin’s announcement that its submarines would "sink on sight" brought
the United States into the war.
(HNQ, 4/7/99)
1915 Sep 9, A German zeppelin
bombed London for the first time, causing little damage.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1915 Sep 21, Stonehenge was sold
by auction for 6,600 pounds sterling ($11,500) to a Mr. Chubb, who
bought it as a present for his wife. He presented it to the British
nation three years later.
(HN, 9/21/98)
1915 Sep 25, An allied offensive
was launched in France against the German Army.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1915 Sep 25, At the Battle at
Loos: 8,246 British and 0 German casualties.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1915 Sep 28, At the Battle of
Kut-el-Amara the British defeated the Turks in Mesopotamia.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1915 Oct 8, The WWI Battle of Loos
ended with virtually no gains for either side. There was loss of over
one hundred thousand French, British, and German lives in this battle.
It marked the first use of poisonous gas by the British, which drifted
back to the British trenches.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1915 Oct 11, Despite international
protests, Edith Cavell, an English nurse in Belgium, was executed by
Germans for aiding the escape of Allied prisoners. [see Oct 12]
(HN, 10/11/98)
1915 Oct 12, British nurse Edith
Cavell was shot as a spy by a German firing squad in Brussels, Belgium.
Cavell, the 47-year-old matron of a Brussels training school for
nurses, was known for her compassion and sense of duty. As World War I
broke out in Europe, Cavell helped 60 British student nurses return
home but she remained in Belgium. Even though she knew that helping
soldiers escape from German-occupied territory meant the death penalty,
Cavell agreed when asked to participate in an escape ring that helped
more than 200 fugitive Allied soldiers return home after the British
Expeditionary Force's retreat from Mons. Such a large conspiracy could
not long remain a secret and in August 1915, Cavell and 35 other
members of her organization were arrested. At her hasty trial, she was
condemned to death for "conducting soldiers to the enemy." Although
their action may have been justified under the rules of war, the
Germans seriously blundered when they shot Edith Cavell. Within days of
her death, the selfless nurse was elevated to martyr status and the
Germans were internationally condemned as "murdering monsters." A
statue in St. Martin’s Place, just off London’s Trafalgar Square, is
dedicated to Cavell. [see Oct 11]
(AP, 10/12/97)(HNPD, 10/13/98)
1915 Oct 16, Great Britain
declared war on Bulgaria.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1915 Nov 22, The Anglo-Indian
army, led by British General Sir Charles Townshend, attacked a larger
Turkish force under General Nur-ud-Din at Ctesiphon, Iraq, but was
repulsed.
(HN, 11/22/98)
1915 Dec 31, The Germans torpedoed
the British liner Persia without any warning; 335 are dead.
(HN, 12/31/98)
1915 In London, a Bow Street
magistrate declared “The Rainbow”, a novel by D.H. Lawrence, to be
obscene.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A2)
1915 A.G. Richardson and Co. Ltd.
used Crown Ducal Ware as a trade name for its earthenware. The name was
later acquired by Enoch Wedgewood & Co.
(SFC, 3/5/96, z-1 p.2)
1916 Jan 14, British authorities
seized German attaché von Papen’s financial records confirming
espionage activities in the U.S.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1916 Jan 30, Sir Clements Markham
(b.1830), English explorer and geographer, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clements_Markham)
1916 Feb 9, Conscription began in
Great Britain as the Military Service Act becomes effective.
(HN, 2/9/99)
1916 Feb 28, Henry James (72),
US-British writer (Bostonians), died in London.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1916 Mar 10, James Herriot
(d.1995), Scottish writer and country veterinarian (All Creatures Great
and Small), was born as James Alfred Wight, in Sunderland, England.
[See Oct 3]
(HN, 3/10/01)
1916 Apr 20, German-British sea
battle off Belgian coast.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1916 Apr 24, Some 1,600 Irish
nationalists launched the Easter Rising by seizing several key sites in
Dublin, including the General Post Office. The rising was put down by
British forces several days later. It was provoked by impatience with
the lack of home rule. Michael Collins, a member of Sinn Fein, led
guerrilla warfare.
(WSJ, 10/11/96, p.A8)(SFEC, 12/22/96, zone1 p.6)(AP,
4/24/97)
1916 Apr 28, The British declared
martial law throughout Ireland.
(HN, 4/28/98)
1916 Apr 29, The Easter Rising in
Dublin collapsed as Irish nationalists surrendered to British
authorities.
(AP, 4/29/98)(HN, 4/29/98)
1916 May 3, Irish nationalist
Padraic Pearse and two others were executed by the British for their
roles in the Easter Rising.
(AP, 5/3/97)
1916 May 19, The Sykes-Picot
Agreement was a secret understanding between the governments of Britain
and France defining their respective spheres of post-World War I
influence and control in the Middle East. The boundaries of this
agreement still remains in much of the common border between Syria and
Iraq. Britain and France carved up the Levant into an assortment of
monarchies, mandates and emirates. The agreement enshrined Anglo-French
imperialist ambitions at the end of WW II. Syria and Lebanon were put
into the French orbit, while Britain claimed Jordan, Iraq, the Gulf
states and the Palestinian Mandate. Sir Mark Sykes (d.1919 at age 39)
and Francois Picot made the deal.
(WSJ, 2/27/00,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes-Picot_Agreement)
1916 May 31, During World War I,
British and German fleets fought the Battle of Skagerrak at Jutland off
Denmark and 10,000 were left dead. there was no clear-cut victor,
although the British suffered heavier losses.
(HN, 5/31/98)(AP, 5/31/06)
1916 Jun 5, Lord Herbert Horatio
Kitchener, British war hero, died when a German mine sank his
battleship in the North Sea. In 2001 John Pollock authored "Kitchener:
Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace."
(WSJ, 2/27/00, p.A24)
1916 Jun 29, Sir Roger David
Casement, the Irish-born diplomat knighted by King George V in 1911,
was convicted of treason for his role in Ireland's Easter Rebellion,
and sentenced to death.
(MC, 6/29/02)
1916 Jul 1, At 7:30AM, a 5 day,
continuous, British artillery bombardment of German lines stopped, and
11 British divisions (100,000 men) went "over the top" toward the
Germans. By 9AM 22,000 were dead & another 40,000 were wounded in
what became known as the Battle of the Somme. These attacks continued
for another five months, costing the British over one million killed
& wounded. Field Marshal Douglas Haig commanded the British forces.
4 months of stalemate cost 420,00 British casualties.
(MC, 7/1/02)(AP, 7/15/09)
1916 Jul 1, British court martial
was held for the Dublin Easter uprising.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1916 Jul 9, Edward Heath (d.2005),
later PM of England (1970-1974), was born in Kent county.
(SFC, 7/18/05, p.B6)
1916 Aug 3, Roger Casement,
knighted for his service in the Congo, was hanged at London’s
Pentonville Prison for his activities on behalf of Irish independence.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.12)(HN, 8/3/99)
1916 Aug 5, The British navy
defeated the Ottomans at the naval battle off Port Said, Egypt.
(HN, 8/5/98)
1916 Aug 7, Persia formed an
alliance with Britain and Russia.
(HN, 8/7/98)
1916 Sep 15, Armored tanks were
introduced by the British during the Battle of the Somme.
(HN, 9/15/00)
1916 Oct 3, James Herriot
(d.1995), Yorkshire veterinarian and author, was born in Sunderland,
England. His books include "All Creatures Great and Small." [see Mar 10]
(HN, 10/3/00)
1916 Nov 18, Gen. Douglas Haig
finally called off 1st Battle of the Somme in Europe.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1916 Nov 21, The HMHS Britannic,
the sister ship of the Titanic, sank in the Kea Channel off Greece
after being hit by a mine or a torpedo. 30 people in lifeboats died
from the suction of the sinking ship. The Britannic, launched in 1914
from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, included an
additional expansion joint due to design update following the sinking
of the Titanic in 1912.
(www.titanic-titanic.com/britannic.shtml)(AH, 10/07,
p.14)
1916 Nov 28, The first (German)
air attack on London.
(DTnet 11/28/97)
1916 Dec 5, David Lloyd George
replaced Herbert Asquith as the British Prime Minister.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1916 Cecil Chubb bought the
property that contained Stonehenge from a Wiltshire farmer.
(HT, 3/97, p.22)
1916 Britain appointed a Royal
Commission to investigate the calamitous attack on the Dardanelles.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.67)
1918 Aug 22, Britain’s battle
cruiser HMS Hood was launched. It was sunk in 1941 by the German
battleship Bismarck.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood_(51))
1916-1922 David Lloyd George of Wales served as the
Prime Minister of Britain.
(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.T4)
1917 Feb 7, The British steamer
California was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat.
(HN, 2/7/99)
1917 Feb 17, Edmund Bishop (70),
English secretary of Thomas Carlyle, died.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1917 Feb 24, The British presented
the decoded Zimmermann telegram, a German plot for Mexican help, to
Pres. Wilson and an enraged Wilson released the document to the
American public on March 1. On April 6, 1917, America formally declared
war on Germany and her Allies.
(HNPD, 2/24/99)(MC, 2/24/02)
1917 Mar 11, British troops
occupied Baghdad.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1917 Mar 28, The Women’s Army
Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was founded, these were Great Britain’s first
official service women.
(HN, 3/28/99)
1917 Apr 9, The World War I Battle
of Arras began.
(HN, 4/9/98)
1917 Apr 15, The British defeated
the Germans at the battle of Arras.
(HN, 4/15/98)
1917 Jun 4, The Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire, a British order of chivalry, was
established by King George V. The Order included five classes in civil
and military divisions in decreasing order of seniority. These
included: Knight Grand Cross (GBE) or Dame Grand Cross (GBE), Knight
Commander (KBE) or Dame Commander (DBE), Commander (CBE), Officer
(OBE), and Member (MBE).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire)
1917 Jun 7, British Field Marshal
Sir Douglas Haig launched his assault in Flanders to take German
pressure off his French allies. For months, troops of the British
Expeditionary Force fought a series of pointless battles in a
nightmarish landscape of knee-deep shell holes filled with mud and
blasted, skeletal trees. When the campaign finally ground to a halt on
November 10, 1917, the BEF had suffered losses of 300,000 men and
German losses were around 200,000--for a total gain of four miles.
(HNPD, 6/7/99)
1917 Jun 13, Germany bombed London.
(MC, 6/13/02)
1917 Jun 15, Great Britain pledged
the release of all Irish captured during the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
(HN, 6/15/98)
1917 Jun 17, British king George V
took the name Windsor. [see Jun 19, Jul 17]
(MC, 6/17/02)
1917 Jun 19, King George V ordered
the British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames.
The family took the name "Windsor." [see Jun 17, Jul 17]
(DT, 6/19/97)(MC, 6/19/02)
1917 Jul 9, British warship
"Vanguard" exploded at Scapa Flow killing 804.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1917 Jul 15, Robert Conquest,
English author (Back to Life), was born.
(MC, 7/15/02)
1917 Jul 17, The British royal
family adopted the Windsor name. King George V changed the family name
to the House of Windsor from the German-sounding House of Saxe-Coburg
& Gotha. [see Jun 17,19]
(AP, 7/17/97)(SFEC, 1/19/97, Par p.2)(DTnet, 6/19/97)
1917 Jul 22, British bombed German
lines at Ypres with 4,250,000 grenades.
(MC, 7/22/02)
1917 Jul 31, The third Battle of
Ypres commenced as the British attacked the German lines.
(HN, 7/31/98)
1917 Aug 2, Royal Naval Air
Service officer E.H. Dunning became the first pilot to land on the deck
of a moving ship. He performed the tricky maneuver by flying his
Sopwith Pup alongside the HMS Furious as it steamed at high speed into
the wind, then side-slipping inward to the deck. Furious joined the
British Royal Navy as an aircraft carrier after being fitted with a
primitive flight deck. While the converted ship solved the problem of
launching fighter aircraft, recovery was still dangerous and costly,
since planes launched from the flight deck were forced to land at sea,
where they were often lost. Five days after his successful deck
landing, Dunning drowned during another attempt when his aircraft
developed mechanical problems and plunged overboard.
(HNPD, 8/5/98)
1917 Sep 3, The 1st night bombing
of London by German fighter planes.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1917 Sep 4, The American
expeditionary force in France suffered its first fatalities in World
War I when a German plane attacked a British-run base hospital..
(AP, 9/4/08)
1917 Sep 20, The British assaulted
the Polygon Forest in France.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1917 Oct 8, Rodney Porter, British
biochemist and Nobel Prize winner, was born.
(HN, 10/8/00)
1917 Oct 17, The 1st British
bombing of Germany took place.
(MC, 10/17/01)
1917 Oct, The British Admiralty
ordered that all naval and merchant ships be painted in dazzle
camouflage, to help reduce their visibility to German submarines. The
painting style was the idea of Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971) and came
from his familiarity with the avant garde art styles of cubism and
vorticism.
(ON, 12/05,
p.2)(www.ww2poster.co.uk/artists/Wilkinson.htm)
1917 Nov 2, British Foreign
Secretary Arthur Balfour, in what became known as the Balfour
Declaration, expressed support for a "national home" for the Jews of
Palestine. It encouraged Jewish immigration to Israel in the decade
after WW I.
(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)(AP, 11/2/97)
1917 Nov 7, British General Sir
Edmond Allenby broke the Turkish defensive line in the Third Battle of
Gaza.
(HN, 11/7/98)
1917 Nov 10, The assault on
Flanders, begun July 11, finally ground to a halt. The British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) had suffered losses of 300,000 men and German
losses were around 200,000--for a total gain of four miles and the
occupation of Passchendaele. The battle was later described by Edwin
Campion Vaughan in “Some Desperate Glory” (1981).
(HN, 6/7/98)(HNQ, 11/2/98)(WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)
1917 Nov 16, British occupied Tel
Aviv and Jaffa.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1917 Nov 20, In the 1st tank
battle Britain broke through German lines.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1917 Dec 9, British forces under
General Allenby captured Jerusalem. He liberated the city from Turkish
control.
(WSJ, 4/4/96, A-12)(SFC, 10/18/96, C8)(MC, 12/9/01)
1917 Dec 16, Arthur C. Clark,
English science fiction writer, was born. "Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic." He is best remembered for
his book "The Sentinel," the source of Kubrick’s film "2001: A Space
Odyssey."
(AP, 12/16/97)(HN,
12/16/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke)
1917 Two young girls in the
Yorkshire countryside took photographs that seemed to capture a group
of fairies, the Cottingley fairies. The photos were challenged, mocked
by the press and defended by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and derided by
Harry Houdini. In 1997 the film "Fairytale: A True Story" was directed
by Charles Sturridge and written by Ernie Contreras.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.D6)(WSJ, 10/24/97, p.A20)
1917 Edward Dene Morel, Congo
activist, was sentenced to 6 months of hard labor at Pentonville Prison
for his anti-war activities.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.12)
1918 Jul 26, Britain's top war
ace, Edward Mannock, was shot down by ground fire on the Western Front.
(HN, 7/26/98)
1918 Feb 6, Britain granted
women 30 and over the right to vote.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1918 Apr 1, In England the Royal
Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.
(AP, 4/1/98)(HN, 4/1/98)(OTD)
1918 Apr 4, Battle of Somme
[France], an offensive by the British against the German Army ended.
(HN, 4/4/99)
1918 Apr 22, British naval forces
attempted to sink block-ships in the German U-boat bases at the Battle
of Zeeburgge.
(HN, 4/22/99)
1918 May 17, British authorities
arrested Irish leader Eamon de Valera and other Sinn Fein leaders on
suspicion of conspiring with the Germans.
(ON, 9/04, p.5)
1918 May 19, Florence Chadwick,
the 1st to swim English Channel both ways, was born.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1918 May 29, Isabel Dean, actress
(5 Days one Summer, Virgin Island, Ransom), was born in England.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1918 Aug 2, A British force landed
in Archangel, Russia, to support White Russian opposition to the
Bolsheviks.
(HN, 8/2/98)
1918 Aug 11, The British attacked
with 450 tanks at the Battle of Amiens as the Allies pushed Germany
back.
(MC, 8/11/02)(PC, 1992, p.728)
1918 Aug 20, Britain opened its
offensive on the Western front during World War I.
(AP, 8/20/97)
1918 Sep 6, The German Army began
a general retreat across the Aisne, with British troops in pursuit.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1918 Sep 12, British troops retook
Havincourt, Moeuvres, and Trescault along the Western Front.
(HN, 9/12/98)
1918 Sep 22, General Allenby led
the British army against the Turks, taking Haifa and Nazareth,
Palestine.
(HN, 9/22/98)
1918 Oct 7, C. Hubert H. Parry,
English musicologist and composer (Jerusalem), died at 70.
(MC, 10/7/01)
1918 Oct 10, While President
Woodrow Wilson was attempting to establish "peace without victory" with
Germany, the German UB-123 torpedoed RMS Leinster, a civilian mail and
passenger ferry, off the coast of Ireland. Leinster was usually
escorted by a Royal Air Force airship as a precaution, but on October
10, 1918, the ferry set out alone. Leinster was sunk; 564 passengers
and crewmen perished, many of them American and Allied troops. After
Leinster, the Germans lost their chance for an easy peace.
(HNPD, 10/10/99)
1918 Oct 26, Cecil H. Chubb
donated the property of Stonehenge to the English state.
(HT, 3/97,
p.22)(www.this-is-amesbury.co.uk/stonehenge.html)
1918 Dec 3, The Allied Conference
ended in London; Germany was required to pay to full limits for the
war.
(HN, 12/3/02)
1918 Arthur Ransome (1884-1967),
British agent and writer, wrote a propaganda pamphlet titled: “On
Behalf of Russia: An Open Letter to America.” In 2009 Roland Chambers
authored “The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome.”
(Econ, 8/29/09,
p.73)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ransome)
1918 Duncan Grant painted a
portrait of his lifetime companion Vanessa Bell. They both figured in
the complex love affairs of the Bloomsbury Group. The painting is now
in the London National Gallery.
(SFEC, 2/1/98, p.T8)
1918 Lytton Strachey published
"Eminent Victorians," a scandalous collection of sketches that
revolutionized English biography.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.4)
1919 Jan 2, There was an
anti-British uprising in Ireland.
(MC, 1/2/02)
1919 Jan 5, British ships shelled
the Bolshevik headquarters in Riga.
(HN, 1/5/99)
1919 Feb 16, Sir Mark Sykes
(b.1879), best known for the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement dividing up the
Middle East in anticipation of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, died of
Spanish flu in Paris. In 2008 an Oxford team took tissue samples before
reburying his body in its grave in East Yorkshire. They hoped to find
clues that might help fight a future global influenza outbreak.
(AP,
9/17/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Sykes)
1919 Apr 4, Antony Tudor,
choreographer (Metropolitan Opera 1957), was born in England.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1919 Apr 13, In the Amritsar
Massacre British forces under the command of General Reginald Dyer
killed hundreds of Indian nationalists in the thickly crowded plaza at
Jallianwala Bagh.
(HN, 4/13/98)(EWH, 4th ed., p.1101)
1919 May 9, Arthur English,
comedian, actor (Malachi's Cove), was born.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1919 May 18, Margot Fonteyn
(d.1991), ballet dancer, was born in Surrey, England, as Peggy Hookham.
(HN, 5/18/01)
1919 May 29, A solar eclipse
occurred that was photographed by two British expeditions, one in
Africa and the other in Sobral, Brazil. Arthur Eddington, British
astronomer, confirmed Einstein’s prediction of the deflection of light
from Principe, a Portuguese island off the Atlantic coast of Africa. In
1980 Harry Colling and Trevor Pinch published "The Golem," an account
of the expedition. The play “Rose Tattoo” by Tennessee (Thomas Lanier)
Williams was originally titled “The Eclipse of May 29, 1919.”
(SFC, 10/12/96,
p.E3)(www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~suchii/Edd.on1919.html)
1919 Jun 14, Pilot John William
Alcock (1892-1919) and navigator Arthur Witten Brown (1886-1948) took
off from St. John’s, Newfoundland, for Clifden, Ireland, on the first
nonstop transatlantic flight. The flight lasted 16 hours and 28 minutes
and carried the first transatlantic airmail. They won a 10 thousand
pound prize, first offered by the Daily Mail in 1913.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitten_Brown)(ON, 4/09, p.1)
1919 Jul 15, Iris Murdoch
(d.1999), author of 28 novels (A Severed Head, The Black Prince), was
born in Dublin.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)(HN, 7/15/01)
1919 Jul 21, The British House of
Lords ratified the Versailles Treaty.
(HN, 7/21/98)
1919 Jul 26, James Lovelock,
British biologist and inventor, was born. He developed the Gaia
hypothesis. According to this idea the earth is influenced by life to
sustain life, and the planet is a the core of a single, unified, living
system. "The earth is a living organism, and I’ll stick by that," he
says.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)
1919 Aug 19, Afghanistan declared
independence from UK.
(MC, 8/19/02)
1919 Aug 25, The 1st scheduled
passenger service by airplane between Paris and London.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1919 Aug 28, Godfrey Hounsfield,
British inventor of the EMI-scanner, was born.
(RTH, 8/28/99)
1919 Aug, The British regime
banned Ireland’s Sinn Fein.
(www.thehistorynet.com/mh/blmanagainstempire/)
1919 Sep 27, British troops
withdrew from Archangel.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1919 Sep, The British regime
banned the Irish Parliament (Dail Eireann).
(www.thehistorynet.com/mh/blmanagainstempire/)
1919 Oct 26, Elgar's Cello
Concerto premiered in Queen's Hall London.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1919 Nov 11, The first 2-minutes’
silence was observed in Britain to commemorate those who died in the
Great War.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1919 Nov 28, American-born Lady
Astor was elected the first female member of the British Parliament.
(DTnet 11/28/97)(HN, 11/28/98)
1919 Dec 1, AA Milne's "Mr. Pim
Passes By," premiered in Manchester.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1919 Dec 1, Lady Astor was sworn
in as the first female member of the British Parliament.
(AP, 12/1/00)
1919 Dec 10, Captain Ross Smith
became the first person to fly 11,500 miles from England to Australia.
(HN, 12/10/98)
1919 Dec 18, British pilot John
William Alcock (b.1892), enroute to a Paris air show, was killed while
making a forced landing in fog near Rouen. He and navigator Arthur
Witten Brown (1886-1948) had recently completed the world’s first
nonstop transatlantic flight [see June 14].
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitten_Brown)(ON, 4/09, p.1)
1919 Dec 23, Britain instituted a
new constitution for India.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1919 Britain gave power over
libraries to its counties.
(Econ, 5/1/04, p.59)
1919 The Emir of Afghanistan
declared jihad against Britain’s forces in the North-West Frontier
Province. In response Britain shipped a single Handley Page biplane
bomber to Karachi. It flew over Kabul and dropped four 20-pound bombs.
The emir sued for peace shortly thereafter.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.20)
1919-1921 The 3rd Anglo-Afghan war began. The British
were defeated, and Afghanistan gained full control of her foreign
affairs.
(www.afghan, 5/25/98)(WSJ, 8/25/98, p.A14)
1920 Feb 4, The 1st flight from
London to South Africa took off and lasted 1 month.
(MC, 2/4/02)
1920 Mar 20, Britain and its
allies formally occupied Istanbul.
(Econ, 10/21/06, p.95)
1920 Mar 23, Britain denounced the
U.S. because of their delay in joining the League of Nations.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1920 Mar 28, Dirk Bogarde, actor
(Death in Venice, Servant), was born in London, England.
(MC, 3/28/02)
1920 Mar 31, British parliament
accepted Irish "Home Rule" law.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1920 Apr 20, Balfour Declaration
was recognized. This made Palestine a British Mandate.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1920 Apr 24, British Mandate over
Palestine went into effect and lasted for 28 years. The British
organized a police force with some 3,000 British, Arab and Jewish
officers.
(MC, 4/24/02)(WSJ, 2/2/04, p.A12)
1920 May 10, Richard Adams,
English novelist (Watership Down), was born.
(HN, 5/10/02)
1920 Jun 28, Clarissa Eden was
born to Major Jack Spencer-Churchill and Lady Gwendoline Bertie. In
1952 she married Anthony Eden (1897-1977) who later became Britain’s PM
(1955-1957). Her father was the younger brother of Winston Churchill.
In 2008 Cate Haste edited “Clarissa Eden, A Memoir: From Churchill to
Eden.”
(Econ, 1/19/08,
p.91)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarissa_Eden,_Countess_of_Avon)
1920 Aug 3, P.D. James (Phyllis
Dorothy James), British mystery writer, was born.
(HN, 8/3/00)
1920 Aug 13, George Shearing,
blind pianist, composer (Lullaby of Byrdland), was born in
London.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1920 Sep 2, W. Somerset Maugham's
"East of Suez," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1920 Arthur Pigou (1877-1959),
English economist, authored “The Economics of Welfare.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Cecil_Pigou)
1920 England passed a Firearms
Bill to regulate private use.
(WSJ, 8/6/02, p.D6)
1920 Another Government of Ireland
Act was passed by the British government. This act had a proviso that
the reunification of Ireland was an ultimate goal.
(WSJ,3/13/95, p.A-15)
1920 Britain ferried 6 RAF planes
to East Africa and used them to bomb the fort of Abdullah Hassan, the
“Mad Mullah” of Somaliland. The mullah escaped with 700 riflemen.
(Econ, 8/26/06, p.20)
1920 Reginald Farrer (b.1880),
Edwardian rare-plant collector, died in Burma. In 2004 Nicola Shulman
authored the biography “Rock Gardening.”
(WSJ, 10/29/04, p.W10)
1920 Adm. John Fisher, former
First Sea Lord, died. In 1969 Richard Hough authored "Admiral of the
Fleet: The Life of John Fisher."
(ON, 3/02, p.11)
1920-1944 Montagu Norman served as governor of the
Bank of England.
(Econ, 2/26/05, p.12)
1921 Feb 5, John M. Pritchard,
conductor, was born in London, England.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1921 Feb 12, Winston Churchill of
London was appointed colonial secretary.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1921 Feb 18, British troops
occupied Dublin.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1921 Mar 1, The Allies rejected a
$7.5 billion reparations offer in London. German delegations decided to
quit all talks.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1921 Mar 1, Rwanda was ceded to
England.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1921 Mar 16, Britain signed a
bilateral trade agreement with Russia.
(HN, 3/16/98)
1921 Mar 17, Dr Marie Stopes
opened Britain's 1st birth control clinic in London.
(MC, 3/17/02)
1921 Mar 28, Dirk Niven Van den
Bogaerde (d.1999) was born in London. He later achieved fame as an
actor with the title Sir Dirk Borgarde.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, p.C8)
1921 Mar 30, Countess of
Sutherland, English great land owner, multi-millionaire, was born.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1921 Mar 31, Great Britain
declared a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal miners
on strike.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1921 Apr 16, Peter Ustinov
(d.2004), actor (Death on Nile, Logan's Run, Billy Budd), was born in
London.
(AP, 3/29/04)
1921 May 27, Afghanistan achieved
sovereignty after 84 years of British control.
(MC, 5/27/02)
1921 Jun 10, Philip Mountbatten,
Duke of Edinburgh, Prince, Consort of Elizabeth II, was born in Greece.
(MC, 6/10/02)
1921 Jun 28, A coal strike in
Great Britain was settled after three months.
(HN, 6/28/98)
1921 Jul 8, Great Britain and
Ireland agreed to end hostilities after centuries of strife. Southern
Ireland was granted independence and 6 counties in Northern Ireland
remained part of the UK.
(SFC, 10/14/99, p.C5)
1921 Oct 21, Malcolm Arnold,
composer (Bridge over River Kwai), was born in Northampton, England.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1921 Dec 5, The British Empire
reached an accord with Sinn Fein; Ireland was to become a free state.
(HN, 12/5/98)
1921 Dec 6, Ireland’s 26 southern
counties became independent from Britain forming the Irish Free State.
(HN, 12/6/00)
1921 Sir Alfred Munnings painted a
portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales, astride his mare Forest Witch. It
sold for $2.3 million in 1998.
(SFC, 2/24/98, p.A2)
1921 The British M16 intelligence
agency was formed.
(SFC, 9/21/00, p.A12)
1921 The British contrived the
election of Haj Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974) as the Mufti of Jerusalem.
In 2008 David G. Dalin and John F. Rothman authored “Icon of Evil:
Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam.”
(WSJ, 6/26/08, p.A13)
1921 At the Cairo Conference,
convened by Winston Churchill, Britain and France carved up Arabia and
created Jordan under Emir Abdullah; his brother Faisal (Feisal) became
King of Iraq. France was given influence over Syria and Jewish
immigration was allowed into Palestine. Faisal I died one year
after independence and his son, Ghazi I succeeded him. In 2004
Christopher Catherwood authored “Churchill’s Folly,” and account of the
founding of Iraq.
(HNQ, 6/20/99)(SSFC, 10/14/01, p.D3)(WSJ, 7/22/04,
p.D10)
1921 Winston Churchill, T.E.
Lawrence and archeologist Gertrude Bell promoted "the sherifian
solution," under which the Hashemite family-- Hussein, the sherif of
Mecca, and his sons, would rule over the region under Britain's eye.
(Econ, 7/19/03, p.69)
c1921 The unknown soldier of Great
Britain was buried in Westminster Abbey.
(SFC, 5/27/96, p.B8)
1921 In India Mohandas Gandhi
began peaceful the noncooperation movement against British rule.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)
1922 Jan 22, James Bryce (b.1838),
1st Viscount Bryce, British jurist, historian and politician, died. He
had served as ambassador to the United States from 1907 to 1913. His
books included “The American Commonwealth,” a classic study of the US
Constitution.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9017827/James-Bryce-Viscount-Bryce)
1922 Feb 2, James Joyce's novel
"Ulysses" was published in Paris with 1,000 copies.
(SFC, 10/15/99, p.C12)(MC, 2/2/02)
1922 Feb 6, The Washington
Disarmament Conference came to an end with signature of final treaty
forbidding fortification of the Aleutian Islands for 14 years. The US,
UK, France, Italy & Japan signed the Washington naval arms
limitation.
(HN, 2/6/99)(MC, 2/6/02)
1922 Feb 15, Marconi began regular
broadcasting transmissions from Essex.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1922 Feb 28, Britain declared
Egypt a sovereign state, but British troops remained.
(HN, 2/28/98)(MC, 2/28/02)
1922 Mar 16, Sultan Fuad I was
crowned king of Egypt. England recognized Egypt.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1922 Mar 18, Mohandas K. Gandhi
was sentenced in India to six years' imprisonment for civil
disobedience. He was released after serving two years. [see Mar 22]
(AP, 3/18/97)(HN, 3/18/98)
1922 Mar 22, A British court
sentenced Mahatma Gandhi to 6 years in prison. [see Mar 18]
(MC, 3/22/02)
1922 Apr 13, John Gerard Braine,
British novelist (Room at the Top), was born.
(HN, 4/13/01)
1922 Apr 15, Neville Mariner,
conductor, was born. [see Apr 15,1924]
(HN, 4/15/01)
1922 Apr 16, Kingsley Amis
(d.1995), novelist and poet, was born. He wrote more than 20 novels and
6 volumes of verse. His work included "The King’s English: A Guide to
Modern Usage." In 1998 Eric Jacobs published the biography "Kingsley
Amis."
(WSJ, 10/23/95, p.A-1)(SFEC, 7/19/98, BR p.3)(HN,
4/16/01)
1922 Jun 30, Irish rebels in
London assassinated Sir Henry Wilson, the British deputy for Northern
Ireland.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1922 Jul 17, Donald Davie, English
poet and literary critic, was born.
(HN, 7/17/01)
1922 Sep 11, The British mandate
of Palestine began.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1922 Nov 6, King George V
proclaimed Irish Free state.
(MC, 11/6/01)
1922 Nov 14, The British
Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, began the first daily radio broadcasts
from Marconi House. The company was formed with a commercial mission to
sell radio sets. General manager John Reith (33), Scottish engineer,
envisaged an independent British broadcaster able to educate, inform
and entertain the whole nation, free from political interference and
commercial pressure.
(AP,
11/14/97)(www.bbc.co.uk/heritage/story/1920s.shtml)
1922 Harley Granville Barker,
English playwright, wrote "The Secret Life," a romantic melodrama set
in England’s countryside after WW I.
(WSJ, 8/29/97, p.A9)
1922 T.S. Eliot wrote his long
poem "The Waste Land."
(WSJ, 9/12/96, p.A14)
1922 Scotland joined the United
Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
(WSJ, 4/16/97, p.A13)
1923 Jan 4, The Paris Conference
on war reparations hit a deadlock as the French insisted on the hard
line and the British insisted on Reconstruction.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1923 Apr 5, George Edward Stanhope
Molyneux Herbert (56), England’s 5th Earl of Lord Carnarvon, died in
Egypt from an infected mosquito bite. He financed the excavation of the
Egyptian New Kingdom Pharaoh Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt's Valley of
the Kings.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Herbert,_5th_Earl_of_Carnarvon)
1923 Apr 21, John Mortimor,
British barrister and playwright, was born. He created Rumpole of the
Bailey.
(HN, 4/21/99)
1923 Apr 23, Lady Elizabeth
(Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 1900-2002) married Prince Albert, Duke of York
(d.1952) in Westminster Abbey. Albert was crowned King of England in
1937. [see Apr 26]
(SFC, 8/5/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 8/10/00, p.A16)(SSFC,
3/31/02, p.A3)
1923 Apr 26, English prince Albert
(George VI) married lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. [see Apr 23]
(MC, 4/26/02)
1923 May 25, Britain recognized
Transjordan with Abdullah as its leader.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1923 Aug 12, Enrico Tiraboschi
became the 1st to swim English Channel westward.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1923 Aug 29, Richard
Attenborough, actor, director (Gandhi, Young Winston), was born in
England.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1923 Sep 4, Noel Coward's revue
"London Calling," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1923 Sep 26, Sir Aubrey Herbert
(b.1880), Englishman, died. He worked for Albania’s independence and
was twice offered the throne of Albania. He authored the WW 1 journal
“Mons, Anzac & Kut.”
(www.ku.edu/carrie/texts/world_war_I/Mons/mons.htm)(Econ, 12/18/04,
p.16)
1923 Nov 25, Transatlantic
broadcasting from England to America for the first time.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1923 Dec 21, Nepal changed from
British protectorate to independent nation.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1923 Dec 31, BBC began using the
Big Ben chime ID.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1923 Rudyard Kipling authored “The
Irish Guards in the Great War,” a history of the unit that his son
fought and died for in WW I.
(WSJ, 10/7/06, p.P12)
1923 P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)
authored "Leave It to Psmith."
(NW, 8/20/01, p.56)
1923 Britain’s King George V chose
Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) for the premiership instead of George
Curzon.
(WSJ, 6/11/03, p.D10)(ON, 11/05,
p.2)(www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page137.asp)
1923 Francis Meynell, a British
book designer and publisher, founded Nonsuch Press with his wife Vera,
and friend David Garnett. The following year they brought out “The
Week-End Book,” a handbook for the rural explorer. The last edition was
published in 1955.
(WSJ, 6/3/06, p.P8)
1924 Jan 3, British Egyptologist
Howard Carter found the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun.
(MC, 1/3/02)
1924 Jan 21, Benny Hill (d.1992),
British comedian who hosted his own comedy show, was born in
Southampton, England. [Some sources give 1925 as the birth year]
(HN, 1/21/99)(www.nndb.com/people/883/000031790/)
1924 Feb 1, Soviet Union was
formally recognized by Britain.
(MC, 2/1/02)
1924 Feb 14, Patricia Edwina
Victoria Mountbatten, the 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma, was born
in London.
(www.thepeerage.com/p10115.htm)
1924 Mar 26, Premiere of Bernard
Shaw's "Saint Joan" in London.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1924
Apr 1, Imperial Airways was formed in Britain.
(OTD)
1924 Apr 15, Neville Mariner,
conductor, was born in Lincoln, England. [see Apr 15,1922]
(MC, 4/15/02)
1924 Jun 8, George Mallory (38), a
British schoolteacher, and Andrew Irvine (28), a student at Cambridge,
attempted to reach the top of Mount Everest from their camp at 26,800
feet. The body of Mallory was found May 1, 1999 on a ledge at 27,000
feet. Irvine’s body was not found. Two books were published in 1999
that used parallel narratives for the 2 expeditions: "The Lost
Explorer" by Conrad Anker and David Roberts, and "Ghosts of Everest" by
Jochen Hemmleb, Larry A. Johnson and Eric R. Simonson (as told to
William E. Northdurft).
(SFC, 5/5/99, p.A10)(WSJ, 12/16/99, p.W10)
1924 Jun 23, Cecil [James] Sharp
(64), English folk musician, died.
(MC, 6/23/02)
1924 Aug 3, Joseph Conrad
(b.1857), Ukraine-born and Poland-raised novelist (Jozef Teodor Konrad
Korzeniowski), died in England. In 2008 Jim Stape authored “The several
Lives of Joseph Conrad.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Conrad)
1924 Aug 15, Robert Oxton Bolt,
English screenwriter and playwright, was born. He is best known for "A
Man for all Seasons."
(HN, 8/15/00)(MC, 8/15/02)
1924 Aug 16, Conference about
German recovery payments opened in London.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1924 Nov 2, Sunday Express
published the 1st British crossword puzzle.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1924 Nov 22, England ordered the
Egyptians out of Sudan.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1924 Nov, Stanley Baldwin
(1867-1947) returned for a 2nd time as Britain’s PM and held office
until 1929.
(www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page137.asp)
1924 Noel Coward (1899-1973)
wrote, directed and starred in “The Vortex,” a play about drug abuse
among the English upper classes.
(Econ, 12/15/07,
p.94)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Coward)
1924 Edward Dene Morel, Congo
activist, was elected to the British Parliament. He soon died of a
heart attack at age 51.
(SFEM, 8/16/98, p.12)
1924 In Britain Labor MP Herbert
Dunnico voted against Trident, a program to build fast, light warships.
(Econ, 3/17/07, p.62)
1924 Frances Hodgson Burnett
(b.1849), English author, died. In 2004 Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
authored “Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of
The Secret Garden.”
(Econ, 5/15/04, p.82)
1925 Feb 15, The London Zoo
announced it would install lights to cheer up fogged in animals.
(HN, 2/15/98)
1925 Mar 21, Peter Brook,
director, was born in west London. In 2005 Michael Kustow authored
“Peter Brook: A Biography.”
(Econ, 3/19/05, p.89)
1925 Apr 3, Tony Benn, British
minister of technology (1968), was born.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1925 Apr 23, The 1st London
performance of operetta "Fasquita" was staged.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1925 May 1, Cyprus became a
British Crown Colony.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1925 May 14, Henry Rider Haggard,
English writer (Dawn, She), died.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1925 Jun 15, Richard Baker,
English broadcaster, was born.
(HT, 6/15/00)
1925 Jul 31, An Unemployment
Insurance Act was passed in England.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1925 Aug, The first Fastnet race,
with seven entries, was won by the Jolie Brise. The race starts off
Cowes on the Isle of Wight in England, rounds the Fastnet Rock off the
southwest coast of Ireland and then finishes at Plymouth in the South
of England.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastnet_race)
1925 Sep 8, Peter Sellers, English
comic actor, was born in Southsea, Hampshire, England. He became famous
for his role as Inspector Clouseau.
(HN, 9/8/00)
1925 Oct 13, Margaret Thatcher,
Great Britain’s first female Prime Minister (1979-90), was born in
Grantham, England.
(HN, 10/13/98)(MC, 10/13/01)
1925 Oct 16, Angela Lansbury,
actress (Jessica-Murder She Wrote), was born in London, England.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1925 Dec 1, After a seven year
occupation, 7,000 British troops evacuated Cologne, Germany.
(HN, 12/1/98)
1925 The British coal-mining
industry suffered an economic crisis.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_United_Kingdom_general_strike)
1925 The sale of British titles
was prohibited by the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honours_(Prevention_of_Abuses)_Act_1925)
1925 Britain set its retirement
age at 65.
(Econ, 11/26/05, p.16)
1925 The Locarno Treaty was signed
between Britain, Belgium, Germany, Italy and France. It was a treaty of
non-aggression by Germany, France and Belgium and a mutual guarantee
and promise of assistance by Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and
Italy to maintain the demilitarization of the Rhineland. It was not a
true guarantee against a German invasion, only a promise by Britain to
send troops after an invasion.
(WSJ, 10/28/97, p.A22)
1925 Winston Churchill returned
the British pound to a gold standard.
(Econ, 12/1/07, p.31)
1925 Tomkins Corp. (TKS-NYSE) was
originally founded as F. H. Tomkins Buckle Company, a small British
manufacturer of buckles and fasteners. By 2006 the Company had grown to
become an international engineering business with sales of £3
billion and some 40,000 employees throughout the world.
(www.tomkins.co.uk/docs/aboutus/history.jsp)
1925 Lord George Curzon (b.1859),
British former Viceroy over India, died. In 2003 David Gilmour authored
the biography "Curzon: Imperial Statesman."
(WUD, 1994, p.357)(WSJ, 6/11/03, p.D10)(SSFC,
7/6/03, p.M6)
1926 Jan 31, Jean Simmons, actress
(Thorn Birds, Guys and Dolls), was born in London, England.
(MC, 1/31/02)
1926 Mar 7, The first successful
trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation took place, between New
York City and London.
(AP, 3/7/98)
1926 Mar 31, John Fowles (d.2005),
English novelist, was born. His work included “The Collector” (1963)
and “The French Lieutenant's Woman” (1969).
(HN, 3/31/01)(SFC, 11/8/05, p.B5)
1926 Apr 21, Elizabeth Alexandra
Mary Windsor II, later queen of England, was born.
(HN, 4/21/98)(WSJ, 8/10/00, p.A16)
1926 May 3, There was a British
general strike and 3 million workers supported the miners. The strike
lasted 9 days.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_United_Kingdom_general_strike)
1926 May 9, Joseph Malaby Dent
(b.1849), British bookbinder turned publisher, died. He began
Everyman’s Library in 1906, a collection of low cost classic books.
Random House and Knopf debuted a revived line in 1991.
(WSJ, 1/9/09,
p.D4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Dent)
1926 Jun 5, David Wagoner, poet
and novelist (The Escape Artist), was born.
(HN, 6/5/01)
1926 Aug 6, Gertrude "Trudy"
Ederle (1905-2003), American Olympic gold medalist, became the first
woman to swim the English Channel. Before setting out from Cap
Griz-Nez, France, at 7:09 a.m., Ederle coated her body with layers of
lard and petroleum jelly to insulate her from the cold waters. On that
day, the sea was so rough that steamship crossings had been cancelled,
but Ederle swam on in spite of being buffeted by waves and plagued by
seasickness. She reached Dover at 9:40 p.m., after swimming the Channel
in 14 hours and 39 minutes. This time broke the existing world record
of 21 hours and 45 minutes set by British Navy Captain Matthew Webb in
1875. Ederle died Nov 30, 2003. [see Sep 11,1951]
(AP, 8/6/97)(HNQ, 7/31/98)(HNPD, 8/30/98)(SFC,
12/1/03, p.A23)
1926 Oct 14, The book
"Winnie-the-Pooh" by Alan Alexander Milne (d.1956) was released.
Milne wrote this and other stories, centering the tales around his
little son, Christopher Robin, and Christopher's stuffed animals, like
the honey-loving Pooh Bear, Eeyore (the donkey), Piglet and Tigger. The
geography was based on real places in 14,000 acres of Ashdown Forest,
in the northwest corner of East Sussex, England.
(Hem., 8/96, p.107)(MC, 10/14/01)
1926 Samuel Ryder of Lancashire
(d.1935), England, came up with the idea of biannual golf matches
between the English and Americans. He made a lot of money selling
penny-a-pack seeds. The Ryder Cup of golf is named after him.
(SFC, 9/26/98, p.E4)
1926 Sir Montagu Norman, governor
of the Bank of England, got Britain back on the gold standard with help
by a loan organized by Benjamin Strong, head of the US Federal Reserve
of New York.
(Econ, 1/10/09, p.73)
1926 A general strike was crushed
by British authorities under PM Stanley Baldwin.
(SFC, 11/29/99, p.A26)
1926 Agatha Christie (d.1976),
mystery writer, disappeared from her native Devon. Scotland Yard
undertook a massive search and found her registered at the Old Swan
Hotel in Harrogate. She had checked in as Nancy Neel, the name of her
husband’s mistress, and was thought to be suffering from hysterical
amnesia.
(SFEC,10/26/97, p.T5)
1926 Britain’s Imperial Chemical
Industries (ICI) was formed by the merger of four chemical companies
and was a pioneer in the plastics industry.
(Hem., 1/97, p.27)(http://tinyurl.com/3w5euy)
1926 In England Emma Alice Smith
disappeared as she cycled between her home and a nearby railway station
83 years ago. She had worked as a servant in a large house near her
home in the village of Waldron, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south
of London. Her disappearance remained unsolved, and her body missing,
until 2007, when David Wright, the teenager's great-nephew, came
forward to tell police about a confession, a long-held family secret. A
confession by Emma Alice's sister, Lily, (d.1995) said a gentleman, on
his deathbed sometime in 1952 to 1953, had confessed to killing her
sister.
(AP, 2/4/09)
1927 Jan 7, Commercial
transatlantic telephone service was inaugurated between New York and
London.
(AP, 1/7/98)
1927 Jan 19, British government
decided to send troops to China.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1927 Jan 24, British expeditionary
force of 12,000 was sent to China to protect concessions at Shanghai.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1927 Mar 21, Kuomintang Army
conquered Shanghai as British marines fled.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1927 Mar 26, Gaumont-British Film
Corporation formed.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1927 Apr 12, The British Cabinet
came out in favor of women voting rights.
(HN, 4/12/98)
1927 Apr 19, Rudolf Friml's
"Vagabond King" opened in London.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1927 May 20, Saudi Arabia became
independent of Great Britain with the Treaty of Jedda.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1927 Jul 7, Christopher Stone
became the first British ‘disc jockey’ when he played records for the
BBC.
(HN, 7/7/98)
1927 Aug 9, Robert Shaw, actor and
writer, was born in England.
(HN, 8/9/00)(MC, 8/9/02)
1927 Aug 11, Raymond Leppard,
conductor (St Louis Symphony Orch), was born in London, England.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1927 Oct 14, Roger Moore, actor
(Alaskans, Maverick, Saint, 007), was born in London, England.
(MC, 10/14/01)
1927 Oct 28, Cleo Laine, actress
and singer (Flesh to a Tiger), was born in Middlesex, England.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1927 Dec 14, Iraq gained
independence from Britain, but British troops remained.
(MC, 12/14/01)
1927 Britain passed laws
supporting British film making and forced cinemas to show a minimum
quota of British films.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.62)
1927 William Hodge & Co.
published “The Trial of Herbert Rowse Armstrong” as part of its Notable
British Trial series. Armstrong was hanged in 1922, the only solicitor
ever executed in Britain, for murdering his wife with weedkiller.
(WSJ, 6/9/07, p.P8)
1927 Elsie Wagg thought of getting
private gardeners to open up their gardens to visitors for a small
contribution to a nursing charity. By 2003 Britain's National Garden
Scheme had over 3,500 gardens open to visitors at least 1 day a year.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.119)
1928 Jan 11, Thomas Hardy (87),
English novelist, died near Dorchester. His books included “Far from
Maddening Crowd” (1874) and “Jude the Obscure” (1895). In 2006 Claire
Tomalin authored “Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy)(Econ,
11/11/06, p.96)
1928 Jan 17, Vidal Sassoon, hair
stylist/CEO (Vidal Sassoon), was born in London.
(MC, 1/17/02)
1928 Feb 3, Frankie Vaughn
(d.1999), later singer, was born as Frank Abelson in Liverpool. His
songs included "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine."
(SFC, 9/18/99, p.A21)
1928 Feb 7, Australian Bert
Hinkler took off from London in a two-seat Avro 581E Avian biplane on
the first leg of his solo flight from England to Australia. The
unassuming Hinkler's grueling flight was little noted by the press
until he reached India, then the world press got caught up in the drama
of another "Lone Eagle" performance so soon after Charles A.
Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. As he plotted a course across Asia
and the Timor Sea using a London Times atlas as his navigational chart,
a newspaper editor dubbed him "Hustling Hinkler," a nickname later
immortalized by the American Tin Pan Alley hit song, "Hustling Hinkler
Up in the Sky." On February 22, after flying 128 hours in less than 16
days, Hinkler's 11,250-mile adventure ended in Darwin, Australia.
(HNPD, 2/7/99)
1928 Mar 22, Noel Coward's musical
"This Year of Grace," premiered in London.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1928 Apr 26, Madame Tussaud's
waxwork exhibition opened in London.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1828 May 12, Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, English poet and painter, was born.
(HN, 5/12/01)
1928 Jul 21, Dame Ellen Terry
(b.1847), British actress, died in England. In 2008 Michael Holroyd
authored “A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen
Terry, Henry Irving and Their Remarkable Families.” Her relationship
with actor Henry Irving (d.1905) lasted over 2 decades.
(Econ, 8/30/08, p.79)(WSJ, 3/6/09,
p.W6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Terry)
1928 Nov 22, British King George
was confined to bed with congested lung; the queen was to take over
duties.
(HN, 11/22/98)
1928 The Oxford English Dictionary
(O.E.D.) was first published with over 414,000 entries. It was begun in
1879 and edited by Prof. James Murray (d.1915) with assistance from
William Minor, an American ex-army surgeon. In 1998 Simon Winchester
authored "The Professor and the Madman," the story behind the creation
of the dictionary.
(WSJ, 9/14/98, p.A30)(SFEC, 10/18/98, BR p.7)(WSJ,
10/12/05, p.D13)
1928 In London, a Bow Street
magistrate declared “The Well of Loneliness”, a novel by lesbian writer
Radclyffe Hall, to be obscene.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A2)
1928 Norman Angell (1872-1967),
English journalist, made one venture into economics, when he invented a
card game, described in “the Money Game” (1928). This was an attempt to
explain matters such as deflation and inflation in visual terms which
the ordinary person could understand.
(www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text160_p.html)
1928 Britain introduced universal
suffrage. British women over age 30 had voted since 1918.
(Econ, 5/12/07,
p.57)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_suffrage)
1928 Jul 21, Dame Ellen Terry
(b.1847), Victorian actress, died. In 2008 Michael Holroyd authored “A
Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry
Irving and their Remarkable Families.”
(Econ, 8/30/08,
p.79)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Terry)
1929 Feb 18, Leonard Cyril
Deighton, English spy author (Ipcress File, Fighter), was born.
(AP, 2/18/01)(MC, 2/18/02)
1929 Mar 23, Roger Bannister
England, 1st to run a 4 minute mile (May 6, 1954), was born.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1929 Apr 4, Sigmund Romberg's "New
Moon" musical opened in London.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1929 Apr 26, First non-stop flight
from England to India was completed.
(HN, 4/26/98)
1929 Jun 7, John Turner, (L) 17th
Canadian PM (1984), was born in Richmond, England.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1929 Sep 11, The San Francisco
Bohemian Club honored Winston Churchill, former Chancellor of the
Exchequer in Britain’s recently ousted Conservative government, at a
luncheon.
(SFC, 9/10/04, p.F2)
1929 Oct 11, Sean O'Casey's
"Silver Tassle," premiered in London.
(MC, 10/11/01)
1929 Henry Green (1905-1973),
English writer, authored “Living,” a novel of working class factory
life.
(WSJ, 9/20/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Green)
1929 The labor party emerged from
the general election as the largest party in Parliament. It had been
founded 3 decades earlier.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R25)
1930 Jan 21, An international arms
meeting opened in London. The London Naval Conference, hosted by
Britain, sought to establish naval disarmament and review the
Washington Treaty of 1922, which limited tonnage of new battleships.
After three months of meetings, representatives from Britain, the
United States and Japan signed a treaty limiting battleship tonnage
based on ratios between the nations. Italy and France declined to sign.
A second naval conference in December 1935 did little to promote
further disarmament and, by the beginning of World War II, Germany,
Japan and the United States had all begun building battleships well
over the limit of 35,000 tons stipulated by the original Washington
Treaty. [see Apr 22]
(HN, 1/21/99)(HNQ, 1/1/01)
1930 Mar 7, Lord Snowdon, [Anthony
Armstrong-Jones], photographer, was born in London.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1930 Mar 12, Indian political and
spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi began a 200-mile march to the sea
to protest a British tax on salt. The march symbolized his defiance of
British Rule over India.
(HN, 3/12/98)(AP, 3/12/98)
1930 Mar 19, Arthur J. Balfour
(81), British theologist, premier (1902-05), died.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1930 Mar 30, David Staple, joint
president of the Council of Churches for Britain and Ireland, was born.
(MC, 3/30/02)
1930 Apr 5, Mahatma Ghandi defied
British law by making salt in India.
(HN, 5/5/97)
1930 Apr 21, Margaret Rose,
Princess of York, was born in London, England.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1930 Apr 22, The United States,
Britain and Japan signed the London Naval Treaty, which regulated
submarine warfare and limited shipbuilding.
(AP, 4/22/97)
1930 Apr 29, Telephone connection
England-Australia went into service.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1930 Apr 30, The Soviet Union
proposed military alliance with France and Great Britain.
(HN, 4/30/98)
1930 Apr, In India Gandhi called
for peaceful civil disobedience and the Indian National Congress issued
a declaration of grievances against Britain.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A15)
1930 May 4, Mahatma Gandhi was
arrested by the British.
(HN, 5/4/98)
1930 May 24, Amy Johnson became
the first woman to fly from England to Australia.
(HN, 5/24/98)
1930 Jun 28, More than 1,000
communists were routed during an assault on the British consulate in
London.
(HN, 6/28/98)
1930 Jul 7, Arthur Conan Doyle
(b.1859), British novelist, died. His work included 4 Sherlock Holmes
mystery novels and 56 short stories about Holmes. Doyle was an eye
doctor. In 1999 Daniel Stashower published "Teller of Tales: The Life
of Arthur Conan Doyle." In 2007 Andrew Lycett authored “Conan Doyle:
The Man who Created Sherlock Holmes.”
(SFEC, 6/13/99, Par
p.12)(www.sherlockian.net/acd/)(ON, 3/06, p.12)(Econ, 10/6/07, p.98)
1930 Jul 27, David Hughes, English
novelist (The Horsehair Sofa, The Man Who Invented Tomorrow), was born.
(HN, 7/27/01)
1930 Aug 16, Ted Hughes, English
poet, was born.
(HN, 8/16/00)
1930 Aug 21, Princess Margaret
Rose (d.2002) was born to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Glamis
Castle, Scotland.
(WSJ, 8/10/00, p.A16)(SSFC, 2/10/02, p.A12)
1930 Sep 24, Noel Coward's comedy
"Private Lives" opened in London starring Gertrude Lawrence and Coward
himself.
(HN, 9/24/00)
1930 Oct 10, Harold Pinter,
British playwright (Homecoming, Servant), was born.
(HN, 10/10/98)(MC, 10/10/01)
1930 Oct 20, A British White Paper
restricted Jews from buying Arab land.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1930 Oct 22, The 1st concert of
BBC Symphony Orchestra was led by Adrian Boult.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1930 Nov 22, Peter Hall, British
stage, film and opera director (Pedestrian), was born.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1930 Winston Churchill authored
his autobiography "My Early Life."
(WSJ, 12/29/99, p.A12)
1930 Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966),
English writer, authored his novel “Vile Bodies.
(WSJ, 1/10/09, p.W8)
1930 Pioneer aviator Errol Boyd
flew to London, becoming the first pilot to cross the North Atlantic
outside the summer season. Erroll Boyd, born in Toronto in 1891, flew
for the first time in 1912 as a passenger with American barnstormer
Lincoln Beachey. Boyd enjoyed the experience so much that he decided on
a career in aviation. Taught by aviator John Alcock during World War I,
Boyd went on to a variety of jobs after the war including songwriting
and managing a car rental business. However, Charles Lindbergh’s
successful solo flight across the Atlantic in May 1927 inspired Boyd to
return to flying as a career.
(HNQ, 12/14/00)
1930 British detergent maker Lever
Bros. merged with Margarine Unie of the Netherlands to form Unilever.
(www.ubffoodsolutions.com/company/history)
1930s During the 1930s, the
Handley Page H.P.42 was the mainstay of government-subsidized Imperial
Airways, linking commercial air routes throughout the British Empire.
The prototype H.P.42, dubbed Hannibal, took off on its maiden flight on
November 17, 1930 and soon had several variations to reach British
possessions in Africa, the Middle East and India. Even when the sturdy,
four-engine biplane was easily surpassed in speed by the 1930s, its
luxuriousness rivaled ocean liners of the day. Despite its safety
record and public affection, the H.P. 42 became more obsolete with the
approach of World War II.
(HNQ, 1/11/01)
1931 Jan 29, Winston Churchill
resigned as Stanley Baldwin's aide.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1931 Feb 11, Charles Algernon
Parsons (76), British inventor (steam turbine), died.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1931 Feb 15, [Patricia] Claire
Bloom, actress (Charly, Look Back in Anger), was born in London.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1931 Mar 5, Gandhi and British
viceroy Lord Irwin signed a pact.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1931 Mar 10, British Labour party
removed fascist Sir Oswald Mosley.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1931 Apr 20, British House of
Commons agreed to sports play on Sunday.
(MC, 4/20/02)
1931 May 8, Franz Lehar's
operetta, "Land of Smiles," premiered in London.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1931 Jun 17, British authorities
in China arrested Indochinese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh.
(HN, 6/17/98)
1931 Jun 26, Colin Henry Wilson,
British author (The Outsider) , was born.
(HN, 6/26/01)
1931 Jul 4, James Joyce (22)
married Nora Barnacle (20) in London. They legalized their 26-year
common-law marriage at the Kensington Registry Office in London.
(SFEM, 1/25/98, p.69)
1931 Aug 28, John Shirley-Quirk,
baritone (Death in Venice), was born in Liverpool, England.
(MC, 8/28/01)
1931 Sep 12, Ian Holm, actor
(Henry V), was born in Ilford, Essex, England.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1931 Sep 15, The British naval
fleet mutinied at Invergordon over pay cuts.
(MC, 9/15/01)
1931 Sep 21, Britain went off the
gold standard. The pound devalued 20%.
(AP, 9/21/97)(WSJ, 1/10/09, p.W8)
1931 Sep 24, Anthony Newley, actor
(Dr Doolittle, Garbage Pail Kids, Stop the World) and composer, was
born in England.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1931 Oct 10, William Walton's
"Belshazzar's Feast," premiered in Leeds.
(MC, 10/10/01)
1931 Oct 13, Noel Coward's
"Cavalcade," premiered in London.
(MC, 10/13/01)
1931 Oct 19, John Le Carré,
British novelist who wrote The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
(HN, 10/19/99)
1931 Nov 12, The Sibelius-Ashton
ballet "Lady of Shalott," premiered in London.
(MC, 11/12/01)
1931 In London the Abbey Road
recording studio was established at the former residence of an English
nobleman.
(Sky, 9/97, p.53)
1931 Francis Ingall (d.1998 at 89)
led his Lancers in a charge on horseback at the Battle of Karawal near
the Khyber Pass against Afridi tribesmen. It was the final such attack
by a regiment of the British Army. He later authored "The Last of the
Bengal Lancers."
(SFC, 9/25/98, p.D4)
1931 There was a mass trespass in
the northern Peak District.
(SFC, 6/21/99, p.A7)
1931-1933 In 2007 it was reported that British
scientists began conducting experiments in the early 1930s to determine
whether mustard gas damaged Indians' skin more than British soldiers'.
They went on for more than 10 years at a military site in Rawalpindi
(later a part of Pakistan).
(AP, 9/1/07)
1932 Jan 21, Lytton Strachey
(b.1880), author and part of the Bloomsbury group, died. He wrote
"Eminent Victorians," a scandalous collection of sketches that
revolutionized English biography in 1918. Michael Holdroyd later
authored his biography. In 2005 Paul Levy edited “The Letters of Lytton
Strachey.”
(SFEC, 8/22/99, BR p.4)(WUD, 1994, p.1403)(SFEC,
3/5/00, DB p.4)(WSJ, 12/17/05, p.P13)
1932 Jan 22, British Anglicans
merged with the Old-Catholic church.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1932 Apr 23, The Royal Shakespeare
Theatre opened at Stratford-on-Avon. It replaced one built in 1879 that
burned down in 1926.
(www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,,1740490,00.html)(Econ,
3/31/07, p.91)
1932 Apr 25, William Roache, actor
(Ken Barlow-Coronation Street), was born in England.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1932 May 7, Jenny Joseph, English
poet and novelist (The Thinking Heart, The Inland Sea), was born.
(HN, 5/7/02)
1932 May 9, Piccadilly Circus was
lit by electricity.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1932 Mar 23, Britain warned
Ireland that the loyalty oath was mandatory.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1932 Aug 22, BBS began
experimental regular TV broadcasts.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1932 Aug 27-28, In England 200,000
textile workers went on strike.
(MC, 8/27/01)
1932 Oct 1, Oswald Mosley formed
the British Union of Fascists.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1932 Dec 8, Gertrude Jekyll
(b.1843), English gardener and writer, died.
(WSJ, 3/1/08,
p.W16)(http://www.cix.co.uk/~museumgh/jekyll.htm)
1932 Dec 19, The British
Broadcasting Corp. began transmitting overseas with its "Empire
Service" to Australia.
(AP, 12/19/97)
1932 Sir Oswald Mosley founded the
British fascist party. In 1936 he married Diana, one of the 5 Mitford
daughters. In 2000 Jan Dalley authored "Diana Mosley."
(WSJ, 5/16/00, p.A24)
1932 A British team at Cambridge
Univ. split the atom. Mark Oliphant (d.2000 at 98) was a member of the
team at Cavendish Laboratory.
(SFC, 7/18/00, p.A22)
1933 Feb 9, The Oxford Union,
Oxford University's debating society, endorsed, 275-153, a motion
stating "that this House will in no circumstances fight for its King
and Country," a pacifist stand widely denounced by Britons. [see Feb 9,
1983]
(AP, 2/9/00)
1933 Feb 26, Sir James Goldsmith
(d.7/18/97), later financier and corporate raider (Referendum Party),
was born in Paris to a Catholic French mother and a German Jewish
father who later moved to Britain and served as a Conservative member
of parliament.
(SFEC, 7/20/97, p.B6)(SC, 2/26/02)
1933 Mar 14, Michael Caine,
[Maurice J. Micklewhite Jr.], actor (Alfie), was born in London.
(MC, 3/14/02)(SSFC, 2/9/03, Par p.4)
1933 Mar 14, Winston Churchill
wanted to boost air defense.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1933 Apr 8, Manchester Guardian
warned of unknown Nazi terror.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1933 Jun 12, The World Monetary
and Economic Conference in London opened and had as its object the
checking of the world depression by means of currency stabilization and
economic agreements. Unbridgeable disagreements among the delegates
from 64 nations and the attitude of the United States made the meeting
a total failure.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Economic_Conference)(Econ,
3/28/09, p.65)
1933 Jul 13, David Storey, English
novelist (The Sporting Life), was born.
(HN, 7/13/01)
1933 Aug 21, Dame Janet Baker,
mezzo-soprano (Owen Wingrave), was born in York, England.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1933 Aug 28, For the first time, a
BBC-broadcasted appeal was used by the police in tracking down a wanted
man.
(HTnet, 8/28/99)
1933 Oct 9, Bill Tidy, English
cartoonist (Fosdyke Saga), was born.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1933 Dec 8, Patrick Leigh Fermor
(b.1915), London-born student, set off to walk the length of Europe,
from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. He later recounted his
adventures in “A Time of Gifts” (1977) and “Between the Woods and the
Water” (1986). He was later widely regarded as Britain’s greatest
travel writer.
(WSJ, 11/24/07,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Leigh_Fermor)
1933 Sir Norman Angell
(1872-1967), English journalist, won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was
knighted in 1931. From 1928-1931 he had served on the Council of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs, was an executive for the
World Committee against War and Fascism, a member of the executive
committee of the League of Nations Union, and the president of the
Abyssinia Association.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Angell)
1933 Writer Eric Blair changed his
name to George Orwell.
(SFEC, 10/1/00, BR p.5)
1933 Britain was still operating
under the Ten Year Rule which imposed the assumption that the country
would not be engaged in any great war for the next ten years and that
no Expeditionary Force was required.
(WSJ, 10/28/97, p.A22)
1933 British intelligence agents
discovered that the Nazis were defying a ban on weapons imposed at
Versailles.
(ON, 11/05, p.1)
1933 The first unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) was the radio-controlled “Fairey Queen” biplane. It was
catapulted into the air and survived 2 hours of live fire from a
British warship. In 1934 Britain’s Air Ministry ordered 420 such
aircraft, known as the Queen Bee, which gave rise to the word drone to
describe such aircraft.
(Econ, 12/8/07, TQ p.23)
1933 Harold Peto (b.1854), English
architect and gardener, died. In 2007 Robin Halley authored “The Great
Edwardian Gardens of Harold Peto.”
(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.W16)
1933-1937 In London, England, the huge Battersea
Power Station was built on the Thames. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott designed
the Battersea power station. [He also designed traditional red
telephone boxes of London.] The station was decommissioned in 1982. In
1997 it was scheduled for a $2.2 billion redevelopment by Parkview
Int’l.
(WSJ, 6/25/97, p.B12)(WSJ, 5/11/00, p.A24)(SSFC,
6/19/05, p.E5)
1934 Feb 10, A Jewish immigrant
ship 1st broke the English blockade in Palestine.
(MC, 2/10/02)
1934 Feb 11, Mary Quant, fashion
designer (Chelsea Look, Mod Look), was born in Kent, England.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1934 Feb 23, Edward William Elgar
(76), English composer (Coronation Ode), died.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1934 Mar 26, Driving tests were
introduced in Britain.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1934 Apr 3, Jane van
Lawick-Goodall, ethologist (studied African chimps, 1974 Walker Prize),
was born in London, England. She was a British anthropologist, known
for her work with African chimpanzees. In 2000 her autobiography
"Africa in My Blood: An Autobiography in Letters, The Early Years,
1934-1966," was edited by Dale Peterson.
(HN, 3/4/99)(SFEC, 6/18/00, BR p.6)(SC, 3/4/02)(MC,
4/3/02)
1934 May 9, Alan Bennett,
playwright, actor (Secret Policeman's Other Ball, Beyond the Fringe),
was born in England.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1934 May 25, David J. Burke,
writer, was born in Liverpool, England.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1934 May 25, Gustav Theodore Holst
(59), English composer (Ode to Death), died.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1934 Jun 3, Dr. Frederick Banting,
co-discoverer of insulin, was knighted.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1834 Aug 1, England ended slavery
in the West Indies slaves and all its Caribbean holdings effective on
this date. Slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire with
compensation to the owners. Some 35,000 salves were freed in the Cape
Colony. [see 1833]
(NH, 7/98, p.29)(HN, 8/1/98)(EWH, 4th ed, p.885)
1934 Sep 8, Peter Maxwell Davies,
composer (Prolation, Taverner), was born in Manchester, England.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1934 Sep 19, Brian Epstein, rock
manager (Beatles), was born.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1934 Sep 26, The British liner
Queen Mary was launched. [see May 27, 1936]
(MC, 9/26/01)
1934 Oct 27, Frederick Barclay,
British hotel magnate and multi-millionaire, was born.
(MC, 10/27/01)
1934 Nov 23, U.S. and Britain
agreed on a 5-5-3 naval ratio with both countries allowed to build five
million tons of naval ships while Japan can only build three; Japan
denounced the treaty.
(HN, 11/23/98)
1934 Nov 28, Churchill made a
speech in Parliament and warned of German aircraft bombing London.
(ON, 11/05, p.2)
1934 Dec 9, Judi Dench, actress
(Henry V, Wetherby), was born in York, England.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1934 Sir Lawrence van der Post
(1906-1996) wrote his first book "In a Province."
(SFC, 12/17/96, p.B4)
1934 Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966),
English writer, authored “Ninety-Two Days.” It was based on his 1932
travels in Brazil and British Guiana.
(WSJ, 11/24/07, p.W8)
1935 Feb 16, Brian Bedford, actor
(Anthony-Coronet Blue), was born in England.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1935 Mar 13, Driving tests were
introduced in Great Britain.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1935 Mar 23, France, Italy and
Britain agreed to present a unified front in response to Germany.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1935 Mar 30, Britain and Russia
agreed on treaties intended to curb the power of the Reich.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1935 Apr 10, Vaughan Williams' 4th
Symphony premiered in London.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1935 Apr 19, Dudley Moore
(d.2002), film actor, comedian and musician, was born in Dagenham, East
London.
(SFC, 3/28/02, p.A15)
1935 May 6, British King George
& Queen Mary celebrated their silver jubilee.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1935 May 19, Colonel Thomas E.
Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, died 6 days after
sustaining head injuries in a motorcycle accident on a Dorset, England,
country road. Lawrence served the British Foreign Office as liaison
officer during the Arab revolt against the Turks in World War I. His
leadership and sympathetic understanding of the Arabs were instrumental
in Allied General Edmund Allenby's conquest of Palestine in 1917.
Bitterly disappointed by the 1919 Paris Peace Conference's refusal to
mandate Arab independence, Lawrence resigned from the Foreign Office in
1922 to write books about his Middle East experiences.
(HNPD, 5/19/99)(AP, 5/19/08)
1935 May 22, Stanley Baldwin,
Britain’s former PM, admitted that his estimation of Germany’s
Luftwaffe strength was wrong.
(ON, 11/05, p.2)
1935 Jun 1, Driving test and
license plates were introduced in England.
(DTnet 6/1/97)
1935 Jun 7, In Britain after the
resignation of PM MacDonald, King George V appointed Stanley Baldwin
Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.
(www.archontology.org/nations/england/bpm/baldwin.php)
1935 Jul 30, The 1st Penguin book
was published in England and started the paperback revolution. The
sixpenny books made a 1st blow to the library system.
(SFC, 12/29/99, p.E1)(MC, 7/30/02)(Econ, 5/1/04,
p.59)
1935 Nov 1, T.S. Eliot's "Murder
in the Cathedral," premiered in London.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1935 Nov 3, Jeremy Brett, actor
(Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), was born in Berkswell, England.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1935 Nov 13, Anti-British riots
took place in Egypt.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1935 Sir Michael Tippett, British
composer, composed his initial work "First String Quartet."
(SFC, 1/10/98, p.A19)
1935 The Ramblers Association
began and campaigned for access to roam on privately held lands.
(SFC, 6/21/99, p.A7)
1935 Melita Norwood (23) a clerk
at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association was recommended
to the NKVD by Andrew Rothstein, one of the founders of the British
Communist Party. Norwood served as a Russian spy, "Hola," until she
retired in 1972 and her role was not made public until KGB files,
brought to London in 1992 by Vasili Mitrokhin, were made public in 1999
in "The Mitrokhin Archive."
(SFEC, 9/12/99, p.A16)(SFC, 12/21/99, p.C8)
1935 Henry Grunfeld (d.1999), a
German Jewish refugee, teamed with fellow refugee Siegmund Warburg
(d.1982) to establish the New Trading Co., an investment banking house
that became known as S.G. Warburg in 1946. Swiss Bank acquired the firm
in 1995.
(SFC, 6/16/99, p.B4)
1935 Penguin introduced the first
paperback books in England.
(SFC, 12/29/99, p.E1)
1935 In Britain Stanley Ballwin
regained the premiership for a 3rd time.
(www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page137.asp)
1935-1936 The Chinese Imperial art collection was
exhibited at Burlington House, the Royal Academy of Art.
(SFEC, 10/6/96, DB p.37)
1935-1994 Dennis Potter, BBC writer. In 1999 W.
Stephen Gilbert published "The Life and Work of Dennis Potter." Also
published was "Dennis Potter: Seeing the Blossom: Two Interviews and a
Lecture.
(SFEC, 1/24/99, BR p.1)
1936 Jan 15, In London, Japan quit
all naval talks after being denied equality.
(HN, 1/15/99)
1936 Jan 18, Author Rudyard
Kipling (70) died in Burwash, England. His work included "Plain Tales
from the Hills," "Barrack-Room Ballads," and the novel "Kim." In 2000
Harry Ricketts authored the biography "Rudyard Kipling: A Life." In
2009 Charles Allen authored “Kipling Sahib: India and the Making
of Rudyard Kipling 1865-1900.”
(AP, 1/18/00)(WSJ, 3/30/00, p.A28)(WSJ, 3/14/09,
p.W8)
1936 Jan 20, Britain's King George
V, served from 1910-1936, died at age 70; he was succeeded by Edward
VIII. He is remembered for saying: "Any man who is not a socialist
before he is 30 has no heart, and any man who is a socialist after he
is 30 has no head."
(AP, 1/20/98)(MC, 1/20/02)(WSJ, 7/16/02, p.D6)
1936 Mar 5, A prototype Type 300
Spitfire made it's 1st flight at the Eastleigh Aerodrome in
Southampton, England.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)
1936 Mar 25, Britain, the U.S. and
France signed a naval accord in London.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1936 Mar 29, Richard Rodney
Bennett, composer, was born in Broadstairs, Kent, England.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1936 May 9, Glenda Jackson,
actress (Women in Love), was born in Cheshire, England.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1936 Mar 30, Britain announced a
naval construction program of 38 warships. This was the largest
construction program in 15 years.
(HN, 3/30/98)
1936 May 9, Albert Finney, actor,
was born in Salford, UK. He starred in "Murder on the Orient Express"
and "Tom Jones."
(HN, 5/9/99)(MC, 5/9/02)
1936 May 27, The Cunard liner
Queen Mary left Southampton, England, for NY on its maiden voyage. In
1968 it became a 365-room hotel moored at Long Beach, Ca.
(AP, 5/27/97)(MC, 5/27/02)(SSFC, 9/14/03, p.C1)
1936 Jun 3, Britain’s Air Ministry
placed a £1.25 million order for 310 Spitfire fighters.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)
1936 Jun 14, G.K. Chesterton
(b.1874), English poet-essayist, died at his home in Beaconsfield,
England. His poems included “The Secret People” (1915). As president of
the Distributist League, he promoted the idea that private property
should be divided into smallest possible freeholds and then distributed
throughout society.
(Econ, 4/2/05,
p.51)(www.online-literature.com/chesterton/)
1936 Aug 26, The Anglo-Egyptian
Treaty, calling for most British troops to leave Egypt, except those
guarding the Suez Canal, was signed in Montreux, Switzerland. It was
abrogated by Egypt in 1951.
(AP, 8/26/05)
1936 Sep 25-1936 Oct 13, The
Tripartite Agreement between the US, the UK, and France established
that the subscribing nations agree to buy and sell gold freely with
each other in exchange for their own currency.
(www.reserveasset.gold.org/monetary_history/key_documents/after/)
1936 Sep 30, Pinewood Studios
opened in Buckinghamshire England.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1936 Nov 2, The first
high-definition public television transmissions began from Alexandra
Palace in north London by the BBC.
(HN, 11/2/98)(MC, 11/2/01)
1936 Nov 27, Great Britain’s
Anthony Eden warned Hitler that Britain would fight to protect Belgium.
(HN, 11/27/98)
1936 Nov 30, London's famed
Crystal Palace, constructed for the International Exhibition of 1851,
was destroyed in a fire.
(AP, 11/30/97)
1936 Dec 10, Edward VIII abdicated
to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, an American born divorcee. [see Dec
11]
(HN, 12/10/98)
1936 Dec 11, Britain's King Edward
VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis
Warfield Simpson. Edward VIII had been king of Great Britain and
Ireland for less than a year when he abdicated the throne to marry "the
woman I love,"--the twice-divorced American Wallis Warfield Spencer
Simpson. The eldest child of King George V and Queen Mary, Edward met
the Baltimore-born Mrs. Simpson in 1931 while she was still married to
her second husband. Their relationship caused much consternation among
British traditionalists since the Church of England forbade divorced
persons to remarry and would not recognize a marriage between Edward
and Mrs. Simpson. After his ascension to the throne on January 20,
1936, Edward VIII expressed his desire to marry Mrs. Simpson and, if he
could not do so and remain king, he said he was "prepared to go." After
his abdication, Edward was awarded the title Duke of Windsor by his
brother, King George VI. Edward and Mrs. Simpson were married in June
1937.
(HFA, ‘96, p.44)(WUD, 1994, p. 454)(AP,
12/11/97)(HNPD, 12/11/98)
1936 John Maynard Keynes published
"The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money." It taught that
the classic model of Adam Smith was a special case and only applied in
times of full employment. At other times he asserted that the economy
needed a large and activist government to steer it on the road of full
employment. His theories played a part in Roosevelt's New Deal which
helped revive the US economy.
(WSJ, 10/9/97, p.A18)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R20)
1936 Agatha Christie authored her
novel “Murder in Mesopotamia.” During the 1930s she accompanied her
husband Max Mallowan, British archeologist, on excavations in southern
Iraq and later wrote an account of their work titled “Come Tell Me How
You Live” (1946).
(MT, summer 2003, p.12)
1936 Terence Rattigan (1911-1977)
wrote his play "French Without Tears."
(SFC, 6/23/97, p.E3)
1936 London’s Gatwick Airport
opened. It featured direct rail to London, a round terminal on a
circular island in the airfield, and could service 6 planes
simultaneously.
(SFEC, 5/26/97, p.B1)
1936 England tried out automatic
teller machines (ATMs) but they could only be used for cash deposits.
(SFC, 7/13/96, p. E3)
1936 James Lees-Milne (1908-1997),
British architectural historian, was appointed the National Trust’s
first Country Houses secretary. He began publishing his diaries in the
1970s.
(WSJ, 7/1/06, p.P6)
1936 Attendance to greyhound
racing peaked in Britain at about 38 million.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.74)
1937 Feb 22, Samuel Whitbread,
English brewer, multi-millionaire, was born.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1937 Feb 26, C. Isherwood and W.H.
Auden's "Ascent of F6" premiered in London.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1937
Apr 1, Aden became a British colony.
(OTD)
1937 Apr 13, Edward Fox, actor
(M-Never Say Never Again, The Day of the Jackal), was born in London,
England.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1937 May 12, The Duke of York was
crowned Britain's King George VI at Westminster Abbey.
(SFEM, 1/26/97, p.40)(AP, 5/12/97)
1937 May 28, Neville Chamberlain
became prime minister of Britain. Stanley Baldwin had nominated Neville
Chamberlain as his successor and tendered his resignation.
(AP,
5/28/97)(www.archontology.org/nations/england/bpm/baldwin.php)
1937 Jun 3, The Duke of Windsor,
who had abdicated the British throne, married Wallis Warfield Simpson
in Monts, France. In 2003 secret police records revealed that Simpson
was also having an affair with Guy Marcus Trundle, a used car salesman.
(AP, 6/3/97)(SFC, 1/30/03, p.A10)
1937 Jun 8, In Britain Stanley
Baldwin accepted an earldom and retired from politics.
(www.archontology.org/nations/england/bpm/baldwin.php)
1937 Jun 11, Reginald Joseph
Mitchell (b.1895), British aeronautical engineer and chief designer of
the Spitfire fighter, died of cancer.
(ON, 3/07, p.2)
1937 Jun 21, Wimbledon was
televised for the first time.
(Camelot, 6/21/99)
1937 Jul 3, Tom Stoppard, British
author and dramatist, was born in Czechoslovakia as Tomas Strassler.
His plays include "Rosencrantz and Gilderstern are Dead" and "The Real
Thing." His family soon fled the Nazis to Singapore. In 2002 Ira Nadel
authored the biography "Tom Stoppard: A Life."
(HN, 7/3/99)(MC, 7/3/02)(SSFC, 9/1/02, p.M5)
1937 Jul 9, David Hockney,
painter, was born in Bradford, England. He moved to LA in 1978.
(HN, 7/9/01)(SFC, 8/18/01, p.B3)
1937 Jul 20, Don Budge (22),
American tennis player, defeated Baron Gottfried von Cram (28) of
Germany at Wimbledon in a semi-final round to see who would face
England. James Thurber later described the Budge-Cramm five-set
marathon as “the greatest match in the history of the world.”
(WSJ, 4/25/09, p.W8)
1937 Sep 15, Prime Minister of
England Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to discuss the future of
Czechoslovakia with Adolf Hitler.
(HN, 9/15/99)
1937 Oct 9, Brian Blessed, English
actor (King Arthur, High Road to China, Hamlet, Henry V), was born.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1937 Nov 17, Peter Edward Cook,
actor, comedian (Beyond the Fringe, Bedazzled), was born in Torquay,
England.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1937 Nov 17, Britain's Lord
Halifax visited Germany and marked the beginning of appeasement.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1937 Dec 3, Stephen Rubin, English
attorney and shoe manufacturer (Reebok, Adidas), was born.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1937 Dec 23, London warned Rome to
stop the anti-British propaganda in Palestine.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1937 George Orwell authored "The
Road to Wigan Pier." It marked his 1st disagreement with mainstream
Socialists.
(SFEC, 10/1/00, BR p.5)
1937 J.B. Priestley (1894-1984),
English novelist and playwright, authored his play “Time and the
Conways.” It illustrated J. W. Dunne's Theory Of Time through the
experience of a moneyed Yorkshire family, the Conways, over a period of
roughly 20 years from 1919 to 1937.
(Econ, 5/2/09,
p.86)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Priestley)
1937 The film "Fire Over England"
starred Flora Robson, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. It was about
events surrounding the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, DB p.45)
1937 England’s King Edward VIII,
Duke of Windsor, abdicated to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson. [Chronicle
says 1936]
(Hem., 8/96, p.21)(SFC, 12/4/96, p.C3)
1937 Burma was made a crown colony
of Britain.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A9)
1938 Feb 13, Oliver Reed, actor
(Big Sleep), was born in London, England.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1938 Feb 17, The first Baird color
TV was demonstrated at the Dominion Theatre in London. [see Dec 20]
(HN, 2/17/01)(MC, 2/17/02)
1938 Feb 20, Anthony Eden
(1897-1977) resigned as British foreign secretary in a dispute with PM
Neville Chamberlain. He said Chamberlain was appeasing Germany.
(www.bartleby.com/67/1852.html)
1938 Feb 27, Britain and France
recognized the Franco government in Spain.
(MC, 2/27/02)
1938 Jul 20, Diana Rigg, actress
(Emma Peel-Avengers, Hospital), was born in Doncaster, England.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1938 Jul 21, Paul Hindemith &
Leonide Massines ballet premiered in London.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1938 Aug 3, Terry "5 Wigs" Wogan,
British talk show host (Irish Days), was born.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1938 Sep 17, British premier
Neville Chamberlain left Munich.
(MC, 9/17/01)
1938 Sep 20, Emlyn Williams’ "Corn
is Green," premiered in London.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1938 Sep 21, Winston Churchill
condemned Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1938 Sep 23, British premier
Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich.
(MC, 9/23/01)
1938 Sep 29, British, French,
German and Italian leaders signed the Munich Agreement, which was aimed
at appeasing Adolf Hitler by allowing Nazi annexation of
Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, inhabited by a German-speaking minority.
The treaty ceded three areas of Czechoslovakia to other powers: the
Sudetenland was annexed into Germany, the Teschen district was given to
Poland, and parts of Slovakia went to Hungary. British PM Neville
Chamberlain gained a brief peace agreement from Hitler at Munich and
without consulting the Czechs agreed that Nazi forces could occupy
Sudetenland. Some mark this "appeasement policy" as the decisive event
of the century. Chamberlain predicted "peace in our time." French PM
Edouard Daladier was very depressed from the meeting. In 1980 Telford
Taylor published "Munich: The Price of Peace." It is a detailed
political & diplomatic history of the 1930's in Europe, culminating
in the Munich conference. Taylor later helped write the rules for
Nuremberg Trials. In 2008 David Vaughan authored “Battle for the
Airwaves: Radio and the 1938 Munich Crises.”
(http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/book/Chlup/chluplinks/munich.html)(SFC,
6/9/96, Z1 p.5)(SFC, 6/16/96, Z1 p.6)(WSJ, 6/8/98, p.A21)(AP,
9/29/06)(SFC, 5/26/98, p.B2)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.115)
1938 Sep 30, A day after
co-signing the Munich Agreement allowing Nazi annexation of
Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain praised the accord on his return home, saying, "I believe
it is peace for our time."
(AP, 9/30/06)
1938 Sep, The first workable
British radar system, called the Chain Home, started operation. By
December Great Britain had five radar stations along its coasts to warn
of enemy aircraft and over a dozen more were under construction.
Fearing future wars where aircraft, especially bombers, could threaten
Britain, the government pressed engineers to pursue radar research,
beginning in 1935. Many other nations, including the United
States, the Soviet Union and Japan, were busy with their own
experiments with radar.
(HNQ, 1/3/01)
1938 Oct 22, Derek Jacobi, actor
(Lanner-Strauss Family, Dead Again), was born in London.
(MC, 10/22/01)
1938 The BBC began its first
foreign language service, an Arabic radio service.
(WSJ, 1/13/00, p.A19)(WSJ, 1/19/02, p.B1)(Econ,
10/29/05, p.57)
1938 British expatriates in Kuala
Lumpur converted a hunting tradition to a drinking and running event
called Hashing, named in reference to the bad food at the Selangar
Club, where they hung out.
(SFC, 8/11/00, WBb p.7)
1838-1923 John, Viscount Morley of Blackburn,
English journalist: "The great business of life is to be, to do, to do
without, and to depart."
(AP, 8/13/98)
1939 Feb 28, Great Britain
recognized the Franco regime in Spain. [see Feb 27, 1938]
(MC, 2/28/02)
1939 Mar 2, Howard Carter,
archeologist, died in London at age 62. He led the discovery of the
Tomb of Tutankhamen in 1922.
(ON, 5/00, p.8)
1939 Mar 31, Britain and France
agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade. Seven French
islands were annexed by Japan.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1939 Apr 6, Great Britain and
Poland signed a military pact.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1939 Apr 12, Alan Ayckbourn,
playwright, was born in London.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1939 May 17, Britain's King George
VI and Queen Elizabeth arrived in Quebec on the first visit to Canada
by reigning British sovereigns.
(AP, 5/17/99)
1939 May 19, Churchill signed
British-Russian anti-Nazi pact.
(DTnet 5/19/97)
1939 May 23, British parliament
planned to make Palestine independent by 1949.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1939 May 25, Ian McKellen, actor
(Keep, Plenty, Scarlet Pimpernel), was born in England.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1939 Jun 1, Submarine Thetis:
sank in Liverpool Bay, England; 99 perished.
(DTnet 6/1/97)
1939 Jun 5, Margaret Drabble,
English novelist (The Millstone, The Realms of Gold), was born.
(HN, 6/5/01)
1939 Jun 11, King & Queen of
England tasted their 1st "hot dogs" at FDR's party.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1939 Jun 28, Richard Meinertzhagen
(1877-1967, a British army colonel, met with Adolf Hitler to plead on
behalf of the Jews in Germany. He later claimed to have smuggled a
pistol into the chancellery but lost his nerve and failed to shoot
Hitler. In 2007 Brian Garfield authored “The Meinertzhagen Mystery.”
(WSJ, 2/10/07, p.P9)
1939 Jul 8, Henry Havelock Ellis
(80), English sexologist (Man & Woman), died.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1939 Jul 26, The London Times
reported the discovery of a buried ship and other artifacts at Sutton
Hoo. Archeologist later suspected that it was an empty grave and
memorial for a 7th century Anglo-Saxon chief.
(ON, 4/03, p.10)
1939 Aug 25, Britain and France
signed a treaty with Poland promising military assistance should the
Germans invade.
(ON, 11/05, p.3)
1939 Sep 3, British envoy Sir
Neville Henderson delivered Britain’s final ultimatum to the Reich’s
Foreign Ministry.
(DrEE, 10/26/96, p.4)
1939 Sep 3, Britain and France
declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland.
After Germany ignored Great Britain's ultimatum to stop the invasion of
Poland, Great Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of
World War II in Europe. France follows 6 hours later quickly joined by
Australia, NZ, South Africa & Canada.
(AP, 9/3/97)(HN, 9/3/98)(MC, 9/3/01)
1939 Sep 3, The British passenger
ship Athenia was sunk by a German submarine in the Atlantic, with 30
Americans among those killed. American Secretary of State Cordell Hull
warns Americans to avoid travel to Europe unless absolutely necessary.
(HN, 9/3/98)
1939 Sep 6, The 1st WW II German
air attack on Great Britain took place.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1939 Sep 11, British submarine
Triton torpedoed British submarine Oxley.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1939 Sep 14, British fleet sank
the German U-39 U-boat.
(http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 17, The German U-29 sank
the British aircraft carrier Courageous, 519 died.
(http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 19, The British
Expeditionary Force reached France.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1939 Sep 20, After sinking
trawlers off the northern Hebrides, German U-27 was located and sunk by
destroyers "Fortune" and "Forester."
(www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsUboats.htm)
1939 Sep 23, Sigmund Freud
(b.1856), founder of psychoanalysis, died in London. He had escaped
from Vienna in 1938. His work “Moses and Monotheism” was published this
year. In 1986 Frederick Crews, a skeptic on Freud's work, published
"Skeptical Engagements." Crews also published "The memory wars: Freud's
Legacy in dispute" and "Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a
Legend." Freud's last days were dramatized in 1999 by Terry Johnson in
the play "Hysteria."
(SFEM, 1/10/99, p.4)(AP, 9/23/99)(WSJ, 12/23/99,
p.A16)
1939 Oct 1, Churchill called the
Soviets a "riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
(MC, 10/1/01)
1939 Oct 4, Pamela Churchill
Harriman married Randolph Churchill, son of Winston. She was later
appointed by Pres. Clinton as ambassador to France. In 1996 Sally
Bedell Smith wrote her biography: "Reflected Glory: The Life of Pamela
Churchill Harriman."
(SFC, 10/23/96, p.E6)(SFC, 2/6/97, p.A14)
1939 Oct 14, The German U-47,
commanded by Kapitan Gunther Prien, sank the British battleship HMS
Royal Oak at Scapa Flow, Scotland, and 833 people were killed. This
prompted Churchill to order the creation of concrete barriers at the
eastern entrance of Scapa Flow.
(SFEM, 10/10/99,
p.49)(http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/hoy/scapa/)
1939 Oct 21, As war heated up with
Germany, the British war cabinet held its first meeting in the
underground war room in London.
(HN, 10/21/99)
1939 Oct 28, A Spitfire shot down
a German Heinkel-111 over Scotland.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1939 Oct 30, German U boat failed
in an attack of English battleship Nelson with Winston Churchill,
Dudley Pound and Charles Forbes aboard.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1939 Nov 9, In the Venlo-incident,
German Abwehr killed 2 English agents.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1939 Nov 18, The Irish Republican
Army exploded three bombs in Picadilly Circus.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1939 Nov 25, Nazis reported four
British ships sunk in the North Sea, but London denied the report.
(HN, 11/25/98)
1939 Nov, In Birmingham John
Randall invented the cavity magnetron. It was a microwave transmitter
1000 times more powerful than any other at the time.
(Wired, 2/98, p.134)
1939 Dec 2, British Imperial
Airways and British Airways merged to form BOAC.
(MC, 12/2/01)
1939 Dec 6, Britain agreed to send
arms to Finland.
(HN, 12/6/98)
1939 Dec 13, In the Battle at La
Plata 3 British cruisers fought the German "pocket battleship," Graf
Spee, which took refuge in Montevideo, Uruguay. The following day, the
badly damaged ship left port, deliberately ran aground in the bay,
where the officers led the crew in scuttling and exploding the Graf
Spee. Two days later, the commander of the German warship committed
suicide in his Buenos Aires hotel room. Today, at low tide, water
commuters between Buenos Aires and Montevideo can see part of the
superstructure breaking the surface. [see Dec 17,18]
(MC, 12/13/01)
1939 Dec 17, In the Battle of
River Plate near Montevideo, Uruguay, the British trapped the German
pocket battleship Graf Spee. German Captain Langsdorf sank his ship
believing that resistance was hopeless. [see Dec 13,18]
(AP, 12/17/97)(HN, 12/17/98)
1939 Dec 18, The Graf Spee was
scuttled. A ferocious sea battle off the coast of South America between
the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee and the British ships Exeter,
Ajax, and Achilles, preceded the scuttling. The German captain Hans
Langsdorf, later killed himself. On the 13th, heavily the armed German
ship held off the three vessels for three hours, sustaining some
damage, and then fled into the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay. Over the
next few days the British tricked the Germans into believing that a
large British fleet had them trapped.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1939 Dec 23, The first Canadian
troops arrived in Britain.
(HN, 12/23/98)
1939 E.H. Carr, British scholar,
authored “The Twenty Years’ Crises: 1919-1939.” It became a seminal
work on the realism that instructed US and British Cold War statesmen.
(WSJ, 12/29/07, p.W8)
1939 Nicholas Winton saved 669
Czechoslovak children by organizing train transport from Prague to
London at the outbreak of World War II. In 2007 the Czech Rep. awarded
Sir Nicholas Winton (98) the Cross of Merit of the 1st class for saving
the children.
(AP, 10/9/07)
1939-1945 Winston Churchill authorized bribes of some
$100 million to Spanish military leaders to keep Spain out of the war.
(SFC, 8/5/97, p.A10)
1939-1945 Johnnie Johnson (d.2001 at 85), fighter
pilot and leading Allied air ace, shot down 38 German planes. In 1956
he authored the autobiography "Wing Leader."
(SFC, 2/2/01, p.D7)
1939-1945 Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke served as
Britain’s military chief of staff for much of WW II. In 2001 Alex
Danchev and Daniel Todman edited his "War Diaries 1939-1945."
(SSFC, 8/12/01, DB p.62)
1939-1945 Much of what happened at Bletchley Park
remains as mysterious today as when the 581-acre Buckinghamshire estate
became the center for an unprecedented technological offensive against
Hitler’s encrypted military communications. Under the code name Ultra,
cryptologists at Bletchley intercepted and decoded confidential German
radio signals, including the supposedly unbreakable Enigma code, the
primary method the German armed forces use to encrypt radio dispatches.
(HNQ, 6/22/01)
1939-1945 Improvised from a bomber, the twin engine
Bristol Beaufighter was the most heavily armed Allied fighter of World
War II, the Beaufighter was one of the finest multi-role combat
aircraft to see service during that conflict.
(HNQ, 2/26/02)
1939-1962 A drinking club called "The Inklings"
gathered every Tuesday at "The Eagle and Child" public house in Oxford,
England. Members included CS Lewis, Charles Williams, JRR Tolkien and
others.
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.B12)
1940 Jan 8, Britain began
rationing sugar, meat and butter.
(HN, 1/8/99)
1940 Jan 10, German planes
attacked 12 ships off the British coast; three sank and 35 were dead.
(HN, 1/10/99)
1940 Feb 8, Ted Koppel, American
television journalist, was born in Lancashire, England, as Edward James
Koppel. His family came to the United States in 1953, and he was
naturalized as a US citizen in 1963.
(http://www.biography.com/articles/Ted-Koppel-9368366)
1940 Feb 12, The USSR signed a
trade treaty with Germany to aid against the British blockade.
(HN, 2/12/97)
1940 Feb 14, Britain announced
that all merchant ships would be armed.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1940 Feb 16, The British destroyer
HMS Cossack rescue British seamen from a German prison ship, the
Altmark, in a Norwegian fjord.
(HN, 2/16/99)
1940 Feb 28, The Superliner Queen
Elizabeth was launched in Britain. It was retired in 1968 and destroyed
by a fire in Hong Kong harbor.
(HN, 2/28/98)(SSFC, 9/14/03, p.C1)
1940 Mar 3, A Nazi air raid killed
108 on a British liner in the English Channel.
(HN, 3/3/99)
1940 Mar 5, The British surprised
Mussolini by taking seven Italian coal ships.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1940 Mar 14, Rita Tushingham,
actress (Green Eyes, Dr Zhivago), was born in Liverpool, England.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1940 Mar 16, Germany launched an
air raid on British fleet base at Scapa Flow.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1940 Mar 20, The British RAF
conducted an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1940 May 21, Nazis surrounded the
British Army at Dunkirk.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1940 May 21, British tank forces
attacked General Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division at Arras, slowing
his blitzkrieg of France.
(HN, 5/21/99)
1940 Mar 25, The US agreed to give
Britain and France access to all American warplanes.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1940 Apr 8, German battle cruisers
sank British aircraft carrier Glorious.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1940 Apr 8, British troops landed
at Narwik to mine Norway’s territorial waters.
(ON, 11/05, p.3)
1940 Apr 10, The HMS Hunter, a
British destroyer, went down with 110 men in the fist Battle of Narvik
as the Royal Navy tried to keep German forces from overrunning a
strategic Norwegian port. Germany lost 4 destroyers in the battle. In
2008 a Norwegian minehunter found the wreck
(AP, 3/9/08)
1940 Apr 15, French and British
troops landed at Narvik, Norway.
(HN, 4/15/98)
1940 Apr 29, Norwegian King Haakon
and government fled to England.
(MC, 4/29/02)
1940 May 4, Commander Rupert
Lonsdale (d.1999 at 93) took his submarine, the Seal, into the Kattegat
Strait between Denmark and Sweden, to place mines in the German
shipping lanes. One mine exploded and sent the vessel to the bottom.
They managed to refloat after 23 hours and Lonsdale (35) surrendered
the ship and 59 weary crewmen to a German seaplane. Aside from a few
coastal craft and abandoned ships, the Seal was the only British
warship to fall into enemy hands during WW II.
(SFC, 5/31/99, p.A17)
1940 May 5, Norwegian government
in exile formed in London.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1940 May 7-1940 May 8, The British
House of Commons debated the disastrous Norwegian campaign.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_Debate)
1940 May 8, British PM Neville
Chamberlain resigned.
(http://tinyurl.com/y7nhtr)
1940 May 10, Winston Churchill
took office as PM. Churchill formed a new government and served as the
Conservative head of a coalition government with the opposition Labor
Party. The debate over the Norway campaign led directly to Churchill
replacing Chamberlain.
(WSJ, 9/3/98, p.A6)(PCh, 1992, p.864)(Econ, 11/4/06,
p.67)
1940 May 10, British Local Defense
Volunteers, the Home Guard, formed.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1940 May 13, In his first speech
as prime minister of Britain, Winston Churchill told the House of
Commons, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
(AP, 5/13/97)
1940 May 13, British bombed a
factory at Breda, Netherlands.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1940 May 13, Dutch Queen
Wilhelmina fled to England.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1940 May 24, Hitler ordered a halt
to his forces converging on Dunkirk and the British, who were backed to
the sea. This event and the next 4 days were described in the 1999
book: "Five Days in London, May 1940" by John Lukacs.
(WSJ, 11/8/99, p.A48)
1940 May 20, Gen. Guderian's
British expeditionary army tanks reached The Channel.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1940 May 22, Premier Winston
Churchill flew to Paris.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1940 Jul 10, During World War II,
the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking
southern England by air. Germany began the bombing of England as a
prelude to the Battle of Britain. By October 31, Britain managed to
repel the Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses.
(AP, 7/10/97)(HN, 7/10/98)(ON, 3/07, p.2)
Reginald Mitchell (1895-1937),
the designer of the Spitfire, and Sydney Camm, the designer of the
Hurricane, were both saviors. Both fighters were necessary to win the
battle. The R.A.F.’s Fighter Command began the Battle of Britain with
about 650 Hurricanes and Spitfires, and lost over 900 of same during
the course of the battle; enormous production of replacements made good
the losses to such an extent that at times during the battle, Fighter
Command had over 900 operational Hurricanes and Spitfires. In his book
"The Air War 1939-1945," Richard J. Overy wrote, ". . . the Spitfire
took two and a half times the man hours that it took to produce a
Hurricane fighter." In overall performance the Spitfire was slightly
better than the Hurricane, but the above production figures give some
clue to the Hurricane’s importance. Re the Luftwaffe heavy bomber: The
Luftwaffe had a couple of four-engine bombers, the Heinkel He-177 and
the Focke Wulf FW-200, but neither were produced in large numbers, and
neither were in the same league as the American B-17, B-24, or B-29, or
the British Lancaster. Hitler was fascinated by high-tech "super
weapons" and attempted to produce them at the expense of more
worthwhile, conventional ones. This was a guy who, when nearly everyone
else knew Germany was finished, wanted to build a 1,500-ton tank and a
long-range rocket to attack the United States!
(ExH, 3/23/98)
The Battle of Britain in
July-October of 1940 was an earth-shakingly decisive campaign (not just
a battle). Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe gathered over 2,500 combat
planes for a bombing campaign that would be a prelude to "Operation
Sealion" (an invasion of Britain). British Air Marshall Hugh C.
Dowding’s Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command could muster about 650
decent fighters (Hurricanes and Spitfires). The Luftwaffe came
perilously close to wearing down the R.A.F., but at about that time, a
German bomber accidentally dropped bombs on London, Churchill bombed
Berlin, and Hitler switched the Luftwaffe’s attack from the R.A.F. to
London, giving the R.A.F. a breather. The Luftwaffe’s bombers carried
too small a bomb load for a strategic bombing campaign and were
inadequately armed to defend themselves against R.A.F. fighters. The
Luftwaffe’s Me-109 fighter lacked the range to provide sufficient
escort for the bombers, which were massacred by Hurricanes and
Spitfires. The Germans knew that the British radar installations
existed, and did launch some attacks upon them, but never realized how
vital radar truly was in directing R.A.F. fighters to intercept raiding
aircraft.
(ExC, JWL, 3/20/98)
1940 May 31, General Bernard
Montgomery left Dunkirk.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1940 May 31, Winston Churchill
flew to Paris.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1940 May, Winston Churchill faced
down the apostles of appeasement in his War Cabinet. In 2000 John
Lukacs authored "Five Days in London, May 1940," which told of struggle
in the English cabinet.
(SFEC, 2/27/00, BR p.8)
1940 Jun 3, Last British and
French troops left Dunkirk.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1940 Jun 4, The Allied military
evacuation of 300,000 troops from Dunkirk, France, ended.
(AP, 6/4/97)(HN, 6/4/98)
1940 Jun 10, Italy declared war on
France and Britain; Canada declared war on Italy.
(AP, 6/10/97)
1940 Jun 18, During World War Two,
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged his countrymen to
conduct themselves in a manner that would prompt future generations to
say, "This was their finest hour."
(AP, 6/18/00)
1940 Jul 3, British Royal Navy
sank a French fleet in North Africa, ten days after France had signed
an armistice with Nazi Germany.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1940 Jul 4, British destroyed
French battle fleet at Oran, Algeria, 1267 died.
(Maggio)
1940 Jul 5, During World War II,
Britain and Marshal Henri Petain's Vichy government in France broke
diplomatic relations.
(AP, 7/5/97)(HN, 7/5/98)
1940 Jul 7, Ringo Starr, drummer
for the Beatles, was born. He went on to a solo career and acting.
(HN, 7/7/99)
1940 Jul 10, During World War II,
the 114-day Battle of Britain began as Nazi forces began attacking
southern England by air. By October 31, Britain managed to repel the
Luftwaffe, which suffered heavy losses. Reginald Mitchell (1895-1937),
the designer of the Spitfire, and Sydney Camm, the designer of the
Hurricane, were both saviors. Both fighters were necessary to win the
battle. The R.A.F.’s Fighter Command began the Battle of Britain with
about 650 Hurricanes and Spitfires, and lost over 900 of same during
the course of the battle; enormous production of replacements made good
the losses to such an extent that at times during the battle, Fighter
Command had over 900 operational Hurricanes and Spitfires. In his book
"The Air War 1939-1945," Richard J. Overy wrote, ". . . the Spitfire
took two and a half times the man hours that it took to produce a
Hurricane fighter." In overall performance the Spitfire was slightly
better than the Hurricane, but the above production figures give some
clue to the Hurricane’s importance. Re the Luftwaffe heavy bomber: The
Luftwaffe had a couple of four-engine bombers, the Heinkel He-177 and
the Focke Wulf FW-200, but neither were produced in large numbers, and
neither were in the same league as the American B-17, B-24, or B-29, or
the British Lancaster. Hitler was fascinated by high-tech "super
weapons" and attempted to produce them at the expense of more
worthwhile, conventional ones. This was a guy who, when nearly everyone
else knew Germany was finished, wanted to build a 1,500-ton tank and a
long-range rocket to attack the United States!
(AP, 7/10/97)(ON, 3/07, p.2)(ExH, 3/23/98)
1940 Jul 10-1940 Oct 31, The
Battle of Britain in July-October of 1940 was an earth-shakingly
decisive campaign (not just a battle). Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe
gathered over 2,500 combat planes for a bombing campaign that would be
a prelude to "Operation Sea Lion" (an invasion of Britain). British Air
Marshall Hugh C. Dowding’s Royal Air Force’s Fighter Command could
muster about 650 decent fighters (Hurricanes and Spitfires). The
Luftwaffe came perilously close to wearing down the R.A.F., but at
about that time, a German bomber accidentally dropped bombs on London,
Churchill bombed Berlin, and Hitler switched the Luftwaffe’s attack
from the R.A.F. to London, giving the R.A.F. a breather. The
Luftwaffe’s bombers carried too small a bomb load for a strategic
bombing campaign and were inadequately armed to defend themselves
against R.A.F. fighters. The Luftwaffe’s Me-109 fighter lacked the
range to provide sufficient escort for the bombers, which were
massacred by Hurricanes and Spitfires. The Germans knew that the
British radar installations existed, and did launch some attacks upon
them, but never realized how vital radar truly was in directing R.A.F.
fighters to intercept raiding aircraft. In 1969 the film “Battle of
Britain” starred Laurence Olivier as Hugh C. Dowding.
(ExC, JWL, 3/20/98)(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)
1940 Jul 13, Patrick Stewart,
actor (Picard-Star Trek Next Generation), was born in England.
(MC, 7/13/02)
1940 Jul 19, Hitler ordered Great
Britain to surrender.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1940 Jul 23, German bombers began
the "Blitz," the all-night air raids on London.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1940 Jul 30, A bombing lull ended
the first phase of the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 7/30/98)
1940 Aug 7, Churchill recognized
the De Gaulle government in exile.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1940 Aug 8, The German Luftwaffe
attacked Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of
Britain.
(HN, 8/8/98)
1940 Aug 11, 38 German aircrafts
were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/11/02)
1940 Aug 11, Italian forces
attacked Observation Hill in British Somaliland. Capt. Wilson and
Somali gunners under his command beat off the attack and opened fire on
the enemy troops attacking Mill Hill, another post within his range.
The enemy finally overran the post at 5 p.m. on the 15th August when
Capt. Wilson, fighting to the last, was reportedly killed. 2 months
later he was awarded a Victoria Cross. In April 1941, however, Wilson
was found alive in a prisoner of war camp in Eritrea. Wilson died at
age 96 on Dec 23, 2008.
(AP, 12/30/08)
1940 Aug 12, Luftwaffe bombed
British radar stations and lost 31 aircraft.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1940 Aug 13, Der Adler Tag (Eagle
Day) was the name given to the day the German Luftwaffe launched an
all-out offensive against the Royal Air Force and the British aircraft
industry in southern England. With this action, Adolf Hitler hoped to
knock out any aerial resistance to his planned invasion of the British
Isles. RAF fighter pilots successfully held off the numerically
superior Luftwaffe, in spite of the loss of 415 pilots out of a force
of 1,500.
(HNPD, 8/13/98)
1940 Aug 15, In the largest–scale
raids in the history of aerial warfare, hundreds of Germany planes
struck against London and its suburbs. Hitler’s planned Operation Sea
Lion was to have commenced on this day. However it was cancelled on Aug
17 following heavy German air raid losses. In 2008 Michael Korda
authored “With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain.”
(WSJ, 1/9/09, p.W10)
1940 Aug 16, 45 German aircrafts
were shot down over England.
(MC, 8/16/02)
1940 Aug 18, 71 German aircraft
were shot down above England.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1940 Aug 20, Radar is used for the
first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain.
(HN, 8/20/00)
1940 Aug 20, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying,
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so
few."
(AP, 8/20/97)
1940 Aug 23, German Luftwaffe
began night bombing on London.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1940 Aug 24, Luftwaffe bombed
London.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1940 Aug 25, The 1st (British)
night bombing of Germany was over Berlin.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1940 Sep 3, US gave Britain 50
destroyers in exchange for Newfoundland base lease.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1940 Sep 7, Nazi Germany began its
initial blitz on London during the World War II Battle of Britain. The
German Luftwaffe blitzed London for the 1st of 57 consecutive nights.
Nazi Germany launched the aerial bombing of London that Adolf Hitler
believed would soften Britain for an invasion. The invasion, "Operation
Sea Lion," never materialized. The Luftwaffe lost 41 bombers over
England. The blitz only strengthened Britain's resistance. The defense
of London was for the Royal Air Force what Churchill called
"their finest hour."
(AP, 9/7/97)(HN, 9/7/98)
1940 Sep 9, 28 German aircraft
were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1940 Sep 11, Brian DePalma, Newark
NJ, film director (Body Double, Dressed to Kill), was born.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1940 Sep 13, Buckingham Palace was
hit by German bombs causing superficial damage.
(http://www.raf.mod.uk/bob1940/september13.html)
1940 Sep 15, The tide turned in
Battle of Britain in WW II. A reported 185 German planes were shot down
by Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots, forcing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to
abandon his invasion plans.
(AP, 9/15/97)
1940 Sep 15, Sergeant Ray Holmes
(1915-2005) slammed his Hurricane into a German Dornier bomber to
prevent it attacking Buckingham Palace. The date of 15 September has
come to be known as Battle of Britain Day and has been commemorated
every year since.
(AP, 11/1/05)
1940 Sep 16, The Luftwaffe bombed
the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
(http://www.fishponds.freeuk.com/nluftbri1.htm)
1940 Sep 18, 19 German aircraft
were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1940 Sep 24, Luftwaffe bombed the
Spitfire factory in Southampton.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1940 Sep 26, During the London
Blitz, the underground Cabinet War Room suffered a hit when a bomb
exploded on the Clive Steps.
(HN, 9/26/99)
1940 Sep 27, 55 German aircrafts
were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1940 Sep 30, 47 German aircrafts
were shot down above England.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1940 Oct 2, 17 German aircrafts
were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1940 Oct 2, The British liner
Empress, loaded with refugees for Canada, sank.
(MC, 10/2/01)
1940 Oct 4, 12 German aircrafts
were shot down above England.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1940 Oct 9, John Winston Lennon
(d.1980) was born in Liverpool, England. Composer; musician; one fourth
of the idolized rock group, The Beatles; 2nd wife was Yoko Ono he had
two children Julian (from his first wife who he mostly abandoned
emotionally and financially) and Sean. On December 8, 1980, John Lennon
was shot to death outside his New York City apartment building. "The
unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends
everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace,
love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown
and it's plain sailing."
(HN, 10/9/98)(AP, 12/8/98)(MC, 10/9/01)
1940 Oct 15-1940 Oct 16, London's
Waterloo Station was bombed by Germans. The bombing continued on London
for 2 days and killed 400 people.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1940 Oct 18, Britain reopened the
Burma Road linking Myanmar with China, three months after closing it.
(AP, 10/18/06)
1940 Oct 31, In the Battle of
Britain, the German and British duel for control of English Channel,
ended.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1940 Nov 10, Arthur Neville
Chamberlain (71), British premier (1937-40), died.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1940 Nov 11, Britain’s Royal Navy
attacked the Italian fleet at Taranto.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1940 Nov 14, Coventry, England,
was devastated by German bombers in the worst air raid of World War II,
killing 1,000.
(AP, 11/14/97)(HN, 11/14/98)
1940 Nov 19, A German air raid on
Birmingham failed.
(MC, 11/19/01)
1940 Dec 8, During the Battle of
Britain, the German Luftwaffe launched a massive attack on London as
night fell. For nearly 24 hours, the Luftwaffe rained tons of bombs
over the city, causing the first serious damage to the House of Commons
and Tower of London.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1940 Dec 9, British troops opened
their first major offensive in North Africa during World War II and
seized 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
(AP, 12/9/97)(HN, 12/9/98)
1940 Dec 16, British carried out
an air raid on Italian Somalia.
(HN, 12/16/98)
1940 Dec 29, During World War II,
Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London, setting off what
came to be known as "The Second Great Fire of London." In 2006 Margaret
Gaskin authored “Blitz: The Story of December 29, 1940.”
(AP, 12/29/97)(SSFC, 12/17/06, p.M3)
1940 Singer Dusty Springfield was
born as Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in London.
(SFC, 3/4/99, p.D2)
1940 P.A. Wodehouse (d.1975),
British writer, was put into an internment camp after Germany defeated
France, where he and his wife, Edith, were living. He was released the
following year and made five lighthearted radio broadcasts to England
and America from Berlin.
(AP, 8/16/02)
1940 Britain formed the Special
Operations Executive (SOE) to organize agents abroad. In 1942 the SOE
began recruiting women. In 2005 Sarah Helm authored “A Life in Secrets:
The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of the SOE.”
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.69)
1940 Britain’s PM Winston
Churchill sent a handful of young British officers to Washington, DC,
to ingratiate themselves on the social scene and advance the British
cause through good manners. They included Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming and
David Ogilvy. In 2008 Jennet Conant authored “The Irregulars: Roald
Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.
(WSJ, 9/11/08, p.A13)
1940 Following the fall of France
Claude Peri commandeered the merchant ship Le Rhin and placed it at the
disposal of British naval intelligence. Peri got his mistress,
Madeleine Bayard, the job of cipher officer on the ship. It was renamed
the HMS Fidelity and got torpedoed in 1942. In 2005 Edward Marriot
authored “Claude and Madeleine: A True Story of Love War and Espionage.”
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.69)
1940-1944 Britain’s Special Operations Executive, an
agency set up by Winston Churchill, carried out operations in Albania
to support anti-German partisans. In 2008 Roderick Bailey authored ”The
Wildest Province: SOE in the Land of the Eagle.”
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.97)
1941 Jan 21, British communist
newspaper "Daily Worker" was banned.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1941 Jan 21, Australia &
Britain attacked Tobruk, Libya.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1941 Jan 22, British and
Australian troops captured Tobruk from Italians.
(MC, 1/22/02)
1941 Jan 27, The United States and
Great Britain began high-level military talks in Washington.
(HN, 1/27/99)
1941 Feb 6, The RAF cleared the
way as British took Benghazi, Libya, trapping thousands of Italians.
(HN, 2/6/99)
1941 Feb 9, British troops
conquered El Agheila.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1941 Feb 10, London severed
diplomatic relations with Romania. Romania's indigenous fighter, the
IAR 80, saw service in defense of its homeland and against the Soviets.
(HN, 2/10/97)
1941 Feb 22, Arthur T "Bomber"
Harris became British Air Marshal.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1941 Feb 26, British took the
Somali capital in East Africa.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1941 Mar 5, Britain severed all
relation with Bulgaria and prepared for an air attack on Bulgaria.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1941 Mar 7, British troops invaded
Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
(MC, 3/7/02)
1941 Mar 7, 50,000 British
soldiers landed in Greece.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1941 Mar 10, Vichy France
threatened to use its navy if Britain would not allow food to reach
France.
(HN, 3/10/98)
1941 Mar 21, The last Italian post
in East Libya fell to the British.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1941 Mar 26, Clinton Richard
Dawkins, British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science
author, was born. He came to prominence with his 1976 book “The Selfish
Gene,” which popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and
introduced the term meme.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins)
1941 Mar 27, Britain leased
defense bases in Trinidad to the U.S. for a period of 99 years.
(HN, 3/27/98)
1941 Mar 28, The Italian fleet was
routed by the British at the Battle of Matapan.
(HN, 3/28/99)
1941 Mar 28, Novelist and critic
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), born as Virginia Stephen, died in Lewes,
England. She feared a mental breakdown and threw herself into the River
Ouse near her home in Sussex. Her body was never found. She was an
English novelist, essayist and critic and wrote standing up. In 1997
"Art and Affection, A Life of Virginia Woolf" was published. In 1997 a
biography by Hermione Lee was published.
(WUD, 1994, p.1643)(SFC, 6/23/96, zone 1 p.2)(SFEM,
1/12/97, BR p.7)(AP, 3/28/97)(SFEC, 6/22/97, BR p.8)(HN, 3/28/01)
1941 Mar 29, The British sank five
Italian warships off the Peloponnesus coast in the Mediterranean.
(HN, 3/29/98)
1941 Mar 30, The German Afrika
Korps under General Erwin Rommel began its first offensive against
British forces in Libya.
(HN, 3/30/99)
1941 Apr 3, Churchill warned
Stalin of German invasion.
(MC, 4/3/02)
1941 Apr 6, Italian-held Addis
Ababa surrendered to British and Ethiopian forces.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1941 Apr 11, Germany bombers
blitzed Coventry, England.
(HN, 4/11/98)
1941 Apr 17, British troop landed
in Iraq.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1941 Apr 23, Greece Army
surrendered to Nazis; RAF flew Greek king George II to Egypt.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1941 Apr 24, British army began
the evacuation of Greece.
(MC, 4/24/02)
1941 Apr 28, Last British troops
in Greece surrendered.
(MC, 4/28/02)
1941 April 30, Iraqi pro-German
junta leader Rashid Ali ordered 9,000 troops to surround Habaniyah and
prepare to take it. The British troops, supported by Assyrian and local
infantry, defeated three Iraqi brigades with a few hundred troops and
96 aircraft. By the end of the battle, British bombers flying
from Habaniyah destroyed the entire Iraqi air force. The ground troops,
aided by reinforcements, launched a counterattack, took control of
Baghdad and reinstalled a friendly government.
(AP, 7/5/03)
1941 May 2, Hostilities broke out
between British forces in Iraq and that country’s pro-German faction
under PM Rashid Ali. Quickly overthrown by British troops, a
pro-British regime under PM Nuri al-Said was installed, declaring war
on the Axis powers in 1943.
(HN, 5/2/99)(HNQ, 6/20/99)(SFC, 9/24/02, p.A10)
1941 May 3, There was a German air
raid on Liverpool.
(MC, 5/3/02)
1941 May 7, British House of
Commons voted for Churchill (477-3).
(MC, 5/7/02)
1941 May 11, The 1st Messerschmidt
109F was shot down above England.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1941 May 15, 1st British turbojet
flew.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1941 May 16, The last great German
air attack on Great Britain was at Birmingham.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1941 May 18, Italian army under
General Aosta surrendered to Britain in Ethiopia.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1941 May 22, British troops
attacked Baghdad.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1941 May 24, The German battleship
Bismarck sank the British dreadnought HMS Hood in the North Atlantic.
1416 died with only three survivors.
(AP, 5/24/97)(HN, 5/24/99)(MC, 5/24/02)
1941 May 27, The German battleship
Bismarck was sunk off France by British naval and air forces with a
loss of more than 2,100 lives.
(HN, 5/27/98)(AP, 5/27/07)
1941 May 29, Roy Crewsdon, rocker
(Freddie & The Dreamers), was born in Manchester.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1941 May 31, An armistice was
arranged between the British and the Iraqis. The British were to remain
in the country and the Iraqis were to do nothing to help the Axis
powers.
(HN, 5/31/99)
1941 Jun 1, British troops
occupied Baghdad, Iraq.
(www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/dec02/middleEast.asp)
1941 Jun 15, Evelyn Underhill,
English poet and mystic, died.
(HT, 6/15/00)
1941 Jul 13, Britain and the
Soviet Union signed a mutual aid pact, providing the means for Britain
to send war materiel to the Soviet Union.
(HN, 7/13/98)
1941 Jul 19, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign in
Europe. The BBC World Service began regular broadcasting
throughout Europe with the opening four notes of Beethoven's
Fifth Symphony, which in Morse Code spell V for "Victory."
(AP, 7/19/97)(MC, 7/19/02)
1941 Jul 23, Douglas Bader
(1910-1982), legless British RAF pilot, was shot down over France and
captured by the Germans. He was liberated when the US First Army
arrived on April 16, 1945. The 1956 film “Reach for the Sky” was based
on the 1954 book by Paul Brickhill: “Reach for the Sky: The Story of
Douglas Bader, Hero of the Battle of Britain.”
(ON, 9/05, p.9)
1941 Aug 9, President Franklin
Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at Placentia Bay,
Newfoundland. Their meeting produced the Atlantic Charter, an agreement
between the two countries on war aims, even though the United States
was still a neutral country.
(HN, 8/9/98)
1941 Aug 10, Great Britain and the
Soviet Union promised aid to Turkey if it was attacked by the Axis.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1941 Aug 14, The Atlantic Charter
was created in 1941. It was a joint declaration of peace aims and a
statement of principles that renounced aggression by US Pres. Roosevelt
and British Prime Minister Churchill.
(HFA, '96, p.36)(WUD, 1944, p.1683)(AP, 8/14/97)
1941 Aug 14, Josef Jakobs, German
spy, was executed in Tower of London.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1941 Aug 25, British and Soviet
forces entered Iran, opening up a route to supply the Soviet Union.
(HN, 8/25/98)
1941 Aug 27, The Shah of Iran
abdicated the throne to his son Reza Pahlavi. Britain forced Reza Shah
to abdicate and installed his son Mohammed.
(www.indiana.edu/~league/1941.htm)(WSJ, 4/2/07, p.A6)
1941 Aug 28, The German U-boat
U-570 was captured by the British and renamed Graph.
(HN, 8/28/98)
1941 Oct 4, Jackie Collins,
actress, author, was born in London, England. Her books included "The
world Is Full of Married Men (1968), "Stud" (1969), "Bitch" (1979) and
"Deadly Embrace" (2002).
(MC, 10/4/01)(SSFC, 8/4/02, Par p.14)
1941 Nov 7,
British air attacks hit Berlin, Mannheim and Ruhrgebied.
(MC, 11/7/01)
1941 Nov 10, Churchill promised to
join the U.S. "within the hour" in the event of war with Japan.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1941 Nov 13, A German U-boat, the
U-81 torpedoed Great Britain's premier aircraft carrier, the HMS Ark
Royal. The ship sank the next day.
(HN, 11/13/99)
1941 Nov 18, British troops opened
an attack on Tobruk, North Africa.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1941 Nov 21, Juliet Mills, actress
(Nanny & the Professor, QB VII), was born in London England.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1941 Nov 22, British cruiser
Devonshire sank the German sub Atlantis.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1941 Nov 27, British 13th Army
corp. reached Tobruk.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1941 Dec 1, British declared a
state of emergency in Malaya following reports of Japanese attacks.
(HN, 12/1/98)
1941 Dec 1, British cruiser
Devonshire sank the German sub Python.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1941 Dec 10, British battleship
Prince of Wales sank off Singapore.
(MC, 12/10/01)
1941 Dec 13, British forces
launched an offensive in Libya.
(HN, 12/13/98)
1941 Dec 13, U-81 torpedoed the
British aircraft carrier Ark Royal.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1941 Dec 19, Japanese landed on
Hong Kong and clashed with British troops.
(HN, 12/19/98)
1941 Dec 22, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington for a wartime
conference with President Roosevelt.
(AP, 12/22/97)
1941 Dec 25, Japan announced the
surrender of the British-Canadian garrison at Hong Kong. Major John
Crawford (d.1997) and some 1,975 Canadian soldiers were captured and
incarcerated at the Sham Shui Po prison camp at Kowloon for 44 months.
(G&M, 7/30/97, p.A24)(HN, 12/25/02)(AP, 12/25/07)
1941 Dec 26, Winston Churchill
became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of
the U.S. Congress.
(AP, 12/26/97)
1941 Vera Brittain authored
"England’s Hour," an account of life under the Blitzkrieg.
(WSJ, 1/21/02, p.A1)
1941 The British seized Eritrea
from the Italians.
(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.A22)
1941 Britain created its Special
Air Service (SAS) to create havoc behind German lines.
(Econ, 10/22/05, p.60)
1941 Pelham Graham (PG) Wodehouse
(1881-1975), English-US writer, made 5 radio broadcasts from Nazi
Germany. This kept him out of England for the last 34 years of his life.
(Econ, 11/20/04, p.87)
Go to GB
1942